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Some materials conduct heat in a way that is isotropic, that is independent of spatial orientation around the heat source. Heat conduction is more commonly anisotropic, which implies that detailed geometric modeling of typically diverse materials being thermally managed is required. The materials used to transfer and reject heat from the heat source in electronics are often anisotropic.
Many crystals are anisotropic to light ("optical anisotropy"), and exhibit properties such as birefringence. Crystal optics describes light propagation in these media. An "axis of anisotropy" is defined as the axis along which isotropy is broken (or an axis of symmetry, such as normal to crystalline layers). Some materials can have multiple such optical axes.
Geophysics and geology.
Seismic anisotropy is the variation of seismic wavespeed with direction. Seismic anisotropy is an indicator of long range order in a material, where features smaller than the seismic wavelength (e.g., crystals, cracks, pores, layers, or inclusions) have a dominant alignment. This alignment leads to a directional variation of elasticity wavespeed. Measuring the effects of anisotropy in seismic data can provide important information about processes and mineralogy in the Earth; significant seismic anisotropy has been detected in the Earth's crust, mantle, and inner core.
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Geological formations with distinct layers of sedimentary material can exhibit electrical anisotropy; electrical conductivity in one direction (e.g. parallel to a layer), is different from that in another (e.g. perpendicular to a layer). This property is used in the gas and oil exploration industry to identify hydrocarbon-bearing sands in sequences of sand and shale. Sand-bearing hydrocarbon assets have high resistivity (low conductivity), whereas shales have lower resistivity. Formation evaluation instruments measure this conductivity or resistivity, and the results are used to help find oil and gas in wells. The mechanical anisotropy measured for some of the sedimentary rocks like coal and shale can change with corresponding changes in their surface properties like sorption when gases are produced from the coal and shale reservoirs.
The hydraulic conductivity of aquifers is often anisotropic for the same reason. When calculating groundwater flow to drains or to wells, the difference between horizontal and vertical permeability must be taken into account; otherwise the results may be subject to error.
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Most common rock-forming minerals are anisotropic, including quartz and feldspar. Anisotropy in minerals is most reliably seen in their optical properties. An example of an isotropic mineral is garnet.
Igneous rock like granite also shows the anisotropy due to the orientation of the minerals during the solidification process.
Medical acoustics.
Anisotropy is also a well-known property in medical ultrasound imaging describing a different resulting echogenicity of soft tissues, such as tendons, when the angle of the transducer is changed. Tendon fibers appear hyperechoic (bright) when the transducer is perpendicular to the tendon, but can appear hypoechoic (darker) when the transducer is angled obliquely. This can be a source of interpretation error for inexperienced practitioners.
Materials science and engineering.
Anisotropy, in materials science, is a material's directional dependence of a physical property. This is a critical consideration for materials selection in engineering applications. A material with physical properties that are symmetric about an axis that is normal to a plane of isotropy is called a transversely isotropic material. Tensor descriptions of material properties can be used to determine the directional dependence of that property. For a monocrystalline material, anisotropy is associated with the crystal symmetry in the sense that more symmetric crystal types have fewer independent coefficients in the tensor description of a given property. When a material is polycrystalline, the directional dependence on properties is often related to the processing techniques it has undergone. A material with randomly oriented grains will be isotropic, whereas materials with texture will be often be anisotropic. Textured materials are often the result of processing techniques like cold rolling, wire drawing, and heat treatment.
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Mechanical properties of materials such as Young's modulus, ductility, yield strength, and high-temperature creep rate, are often dependent on the direction of measurement. Fourth-rank tensor properties, like the elastic constants, are anisotropic, even for materials with cubic symmetry. The Young's modulus relates stress and strain when an isotropic material is elastically deformed; to describe elasticity in an anisotropic material, stiffness (or compliance) tensors are used instead.
In metals, anisotropic elasticity behavior is present in all single crystals with three independent coefficients for cubic crystals, for example. For face-centered cubic materials such as nickel and copper, the stiffness is highest along the <111> direction, normal to the close-packed planes, and smallest parallel to <100>. Tungsten is so nearly isotropic at room temperature that it can be considered to have only two stiffness coefficients; aluminium is another metal that is nearly isotropic.
For an isotropic material, formula_1 where formula_2 is the shear modulus, formula_3 is the Young's modulus, and formula_4 is the material's Poisson's ratio. Therefore, for cubic materials, we can think of anisotropy, formula_5, as the ratio between the empirically determined shear modulus for the cubic material and its (isotropic) equivalent:
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formula_6
The latter expression is known as the Zener ratio, formula_5, where formula_8 refers to elastic constants in Voigt (vector-matrix) notation. For an isotropic material, the ratio is one.
Limitation of the Zener ratio to cubic materials is waived in the Tensorial anisotropy index AT that takes into consideration all the 27 components of the fully anisotropic stiffness tensor. It is composed of two major parts formula_9and formula_10, the former referring to components existing in cubic tensor and the latter in anisotropic tensor so that formula_11 This first component includes the modified Zener ratio and additionally accounts for directional differences in the material, which exist in orthotropic material, for instance. The second component of this index formula_10 covers the influence of stiffness coefficients that are nonzero only for non-cubic materials and remains zero otherwise.
Fiber-reinforced or layered composite materials exhibit anisotropic mechanical properties, due to orientation of the reinforcement material. In many fiber-reinforced composites like carbon fiber or glass fiber based composites, the weave of the material (e.g. unidirectional or plain weave) can determine the extent of the anisotropy of the bulk material. The tunability of orientation of the fibers allows for application-based designs of composite materials, depending on the direction of stresses applied onto the material.
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Amorphous materials such as glass and polymers are typically isotropic. Due to the highly randomized orientation of macromolecules in polymeric materials, polymers are in general described as isotropic. However, mechanically gradient polymers can be engineered to have directionally dependent properties through processing techniques or introduction of anisotropy-inducing elements. Researchers have built composite materials with aligned fibers and voids to generate anisotropic hydrogels, in order to mimic hierarchically ordered biological soft matter. 3D printing, especially Fused Deposition Modeling, can introduce anisotropy into printed parts. This is because FDM is designed to extrude and print layers of thermoplastic materials. This creates materials that are strong when tensile stress is applied in parallel to the layers and weak when the material is perpendicular to the layers.
Microfabrication.
Anisotropic etching techniques (such as deep reactive-ion etching) are used in microfabrication processes to create well defined microscopic features with a high aspect ratio. These features are commonly used in MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and microfluidic devices, where the anisotropy of the features is needed to impart desired optical, electrical, or physical properties to the device. Anisotropic etching can also refer to certain chemical etchants used to etch a certain material preferentially over certain crystallographic planes (e.g., KOH etching of silicon [100] produces pyramid-like structures)
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Neuroscience.
Diffusion tensor imaging is an MRI technique that involves measuring the fractional anisotropy of the random motion (Brownian motion) of water molecules in the brain. Water molecules located in fiber tracts are more likely to move anisotropically, since they are restricted in their movement (they move more in the dimension parallel to the fiber tract rather than in the two dimensions orthogonal to it), whereas water molecules dispersed in the rest of the brain have less restricted movement and therefore display more isotropy. This difference in fractional anisotropy is exploited to create a map of the fiber tracts in the brains of the individual.
Remote sensing and radiative transfer modeling.
Radiance fields (see Bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF)) from a reflective surface are often not isotropic in nature. This makes calculations of the total energy being reflected from any scene a difficult quantity to calculate. In remote sensing applications, anisotropy functions can be derived for specific scenes, immensely simplifying the calculation of the net reflectance or (thereby) the net irradiance of a scene.
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For example, let the BRDF be formula_13 where 'i' denotes incident direction and 'v' denotes viewing direction (as if from a satellite or other instrument). And let P be the Planar Albedo, which represents the total reflectance from the scene.
formula_14
formula_15
It is of interest because, with knowledge of the anisotropy function as defined, a measurement of the BRDF from a single viewing direction (say, formula_16) yields a measure of the total scene reflectance (planar albedo) for that specific incident geometry (say, formula_17).
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Alpha decay
Alpha decay or α-decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle (helium nucleus). The parent nucleus transforms or "decays" into a daughter product, with a mass number that is reduced by four and an atomic number that is reduced by two. An alpha particle is identical to the nucleus of a helium-4 atom, which consists of two protons and two neutrons. It has a charge of and a mass of . For example, uranium-238 decays to form thorium-234.
While alpha particles have a charge , this is not usually shown because a nuclear equation describes a nuclear reaction without considering the electrons – a convention that does not imply that the nuclei necessarily occur in neutral atoms.
Alpha decay typically occurs in the heaviest nuclides. Theoretically, it can occur only in nuclei somewhat heavier than nickel (element 28), where the overall binding energy per nucleon is no longer a maximum and the nuclides are therefore unstable toward spontaneous fission-type processes. In practice, this mode of decay has only been observed in nuclides considerably heavier than nickel, with the lightest known alpha emitter being the second lightest isotope of antimony, 104Sb. Exceptionally, however, beryllium-8 decays to two alpha particles.
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Alpha decay is by far the most common form of cluster decay, where the parent atom ejects a defined daughter collection of nucleons, leaving another defined product behind. It is the most common form because of the combined extremely high nuclear binding energy and relatively small mass of the alpha particle. Like other cluster decays, alpha decay is fundamentally a quantum tunneling process. Unlike beta decay, it is governed by the interplay between both the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force.
Alpha particles have a typical kinetic energy of 5 MeV (or ≈ 0.13% of their total energy, 110 TJ/kg) and have a speed of about 15,000,000 m/s, or 5% of the speed of light. There is surprisingly small variation around this energy, due to the strong dependence of the half-life of this process on the energy produced. Because of their relatively large mass, the electric charge of and relatively low velocity, alpha particles are very likely to interact with other atoms and lose their energy, and their forward motion can be stopped by a few centimeters of air.
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Approximately 99% of the helium produced on Earth is the result of the alpha decay of underground deposits of minerals containing uranium or thorium. The helium is brought to the surface as a by-product of natural gas production.
History.
Alpha particles were first described in the investigations of radioactivity by Ernest Rutherford in 1899, and by 1907 they were identified as He2+ ions.
By 1928, George Gamow had solved the theory of alpha decay via tunneling. The alpha particle is trapped inside the nucleus by an attractive nuclear potential well
and a repulsive electromagnetic potential barrier. Classically, it is forbidden to escape, but according to the (then) newly discovered principles of quantum mechanics, it has a tiny (but non-zero) probability of "tunneling" through the barrier and appearing on the other side to escape the nucleus. Gamow solved a model potential for the nucleus and derived, from first principles, a relationship between the half-life of the decay, and the energy of the emission, which had been previously discovered empirically and was known as the Geiger–Nuttall law.
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Mechanism.
The nuclear force holding an atomic nucleus together is very strong, in general much stronger than the repulsive electromagnetic forces between the protons. However, the nuclear force is also short-range, dropping quickly in strength beyond about 3 femtometers, while the electromagnetic force has an unlimited range. The strength of the attractive nuclear force keeping a nucleus together is thus proportional to the number of the nucleons, but the total disruptive electromagnetic force of proton-proton repulsion trying to break the nucleus apart is roughly proportional to the square of its atomic number. A nucleus with 210 or more nucleons is so large that the strong nuclear force holding it together can just barely counterbalance the electromagnetic repulsion between the protons it contains. Alpha decay occurs in such nuclei as a means of increasing stability by reducing size.
One curiosity is why alpha particles, helium nuclei, should be preferentially emitted as opposed to other particles like a single proton or neutron or other atomic nuclei. Part of the reason is the high binding energy of the alpha particle, which means that its mass is less than the sum of the masses of two free protons and two free neutrons. This increases the disintegration energy. Computing the total disintegration energy given by the equation
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formula_1
where is the initial mass of the nucleus, is the mass of the nucleus after particle emission, and is the mass of the emitted (alpha-)particle, one finds that in certain cases it is positive and so alpha particle emission is possible, whereas other decay modes would require energy to be added. For example, performing the calculation for uranium-232 shows that alpha particle emission releases 5.4 MeV of energy, while a single proton emission would "require" 6.1 MeV. Most of the disintegration energy becomes the kinetic energy of the alpha particle, although to fulfill conservation of momentum, part of the energy goes to the recoil of the nucleus itself (see atomic recoil). However, since the mass numbers of most alpha-emitting radioisotopes exceed 210, far greater than the mass number of the alpha particle (4), the fraction of the energy going to the recoil of the nucleus is generally quite small, less than 2%. Nevertheless, the recoil energy (on the scale of keV) is still much larger than the strength of chemical bonds (on the scale of eV), so the daughter nuclide will break away from the chemical environment the parent was in. The energies and ratios of the alpha particles can be used to identify the radioactive parent via alpha spectrometry.
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These disintegration energies, however, are substantially smaller than the repulsive potential barrier created by the interplay between the strong nuclear and the electromagnetic force, which prevents the alpha particle from escaping. The energy needed to bring an alpha particle from infinity to a point near the nucleus just outside the range of the nuclear force's influence is generally in the range of about 25 MeV. An alpha particle within the nucleus can be thought of as being inside a potential barrier whose walls are 25 MeV above the potential at infinity. However, decay alpha particles only have energies of around 4 to 9 MeV above the potential at infinity, far less than the energy needed to overcome the barrier and escape.
Quantum tunneling.
Quantum mechanics, however, allows the alpha particle to escape via quantum tunneling. The quantum tunneling theory of alpha decay, independently developed by George Gamow and by Ronald Wilfred Gurney and Edward Condon in 1928, was hailed as a very striking confirmation of quantum theory. Essentially, the alpha particle escapes from the nucleus not by acquiring enough energy to pass over the wall confining it, but by tunneling through the wall. Gurney and Condon made the following observation in their paper on it:
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It has hitherto been necessary to postulate some special arbitrary 'instability' of the nucleus, but in the following note, it is pointed out that disintegration is a natural consequence of the laws of quantum mechanics without any special hypothesis... Much has been written of the explosive violence with which the α-particle is hurled from its place in the nucleus. But from the process pictured above, one would rather say that the α-particle almost slips away unnoticed.
The theory supposes that the alpha particle can be considered an independent particle within a nucleus, that is in constant motion but held within the nucleus by strong interaction. At each collision with the repulsive potential barrier of the electromagnetic force, there is a small non-zero probability that it will tunnel its way out. An alpha particle with a speed of 1.5×107 m/s within a nuclear diameter of approximately 10−14 m will collide with the barrier more than 1021 times per second. However, if the probability of escape at each collision is very small, the half-life of the radioisotope will be very long, since it is the time required for the total probability of escape to reach 50%. As an extreme example, the half-life of the isotope bismuth-209 is .
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The isotopes in beta-decay stable isobars that are also stable with regards to double beta decay with mass number "A" = 5, "A" = 8, 143 ≤ "A" ≤ 155, 160 ≤ "A" ≤ 162, and "A" ≥ 165 are theorized to undergo alpha decay. All other mass numbers (isobars) have exactly one theoretically stable nuclide. Those with mass 5 decay to helium-4 and a proton or a neutron, and those with mass 8 decay to two helium-4 nuclei; their half-lives (helium-5, lithium-5, and beryllium-8) are very short, unlike the half-lives for all other such nuclides with "A" ≤ 209, which are very long. (Such nuclides with "A" ≤ 209 are primordial nuclides except 146Sm.)
Working out the details of the theory leads to an equation relating the half-life of a radioisotope to the decay energy of its alpha particles, a theoretical derivation of the empirical Geiger–Nuttall law.
Uses.
Americium-241, an alpha emitter, is used in smoke detectors. The alpha particles ionize air in an open ion chamber and a small current flows through the ionized air. Smoke particles from the fire that enter the chamber reduce the current, triggering the smoke detector's alarm.
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Radium-223 is also an alpha emitter. It is used in the treatment of skeletal metastases (cancers in the bones).
Alpha decay can provide a safe power source for radioisotope thermoelectric generators used for space probes and were used for artificial heart pacemakers. Alpha decay is much more easily shielded against than other forms of radioactive decay.
Static eliminators typically use polonium-210, an alpha emitter, to ionize the air, allowing the "static cling" to dissipate more rapidly.
Toxicity.
Highly charged and heavy, alpha particles lose their several MeV of energy within a small volume of material, along with a very short mean free path. This increases the chance of double-strand breaks to the DNA in cases of internal contamination, when ingested, inhaled, injected or introduced through the skin. Otherwise, touching an alpha source is typically not harmful, as alpha particles are effectively shielded by a few centimeters of air, a piece of paper, or the thin layer of dead skin cells that make up the epidermis; however, many alpha sources are also accompanied by beta-emitting radio daughters, and both are often accompanied by gamma photon emission.
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Relative biological effectiveness (RBE) quantifies the ability of radiation to cause certain biological effects, notably either cancer or cell-death, for equivalent radiation exposure. Alpha radiation has a high linear energy transfer (LET) coefficient, which is about one ionization of a molecule/atom for every angstrom of travel by the alpha particle. The RBE has been set at the value of 20 for alpha radiation by various government regulations. The RBE is set at 10 for neutron irradiation, and at 1 for beta radiation and ionizing photons.
However, the recoil of the parent nucleus (alpha recoil) gives it a significant amount of energy, which also causes ionization damage (see ionizing radiation). This energy is roughly the weight of the alpha () divided by the weight of the parent (typically about 200 Da) times the total energy of the alpha. By some estimates, this might account for most of the internal radiation damage, as the recoil nucleus is part of an atom that is much larger than an alpha particle, and causes a very dense trail of ionization; the atom is typically a heavy metal, which preferentially collect on the chromosomes. In some studies, this has resulted in an RBE approaching 1,000 instead of the value used in governmental regulations.
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The largest natural contributor to public radiation dose is radon, a naturally occurring, radioactive gas found in soil and rock. If the gas is inhaled, some of the radon particles may attach to the inner lining of the lung. These particles continue to decay, emitting alpha particles, which can damage cells in the lung tissue. The death of Marie Curie at age 66 from aplastic anemia was probably caused by prolonged exposure to high doses of ionizing radiation, but it is not clear if this was due to alpha radiation or X-rays. Curie worked extensively with radium, which decays into radon, along with other radioactive materials that emit beta and gamma rays. However, Curie also worked with unshielded X-ray tubes during World War I, and analysis of her skeleton during a reburial showed a relatively low level of radioisotope burden.
The Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko's 2006 murder by radiation poisoning is thought to have been carried out with polonium-210, an alpha emitter.
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Extreme poverty
Extreme poverty is the most severe type of poverty, defined by the United Nations (UN) as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services". Historically, other definitions have been proposed within the United Nations.
In 2018, extreme poverty mainly refers to an income below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (in 2011 prices, $ in dollars), set by the World Bank. In October 2017, the World Bank updated the international poverty line, a global absolute minimum, to $1.90 a day. This is the equivalent of $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression "living on less than a dollar a day". The vast majority of those in extreme poverty reside in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2018, it is estimated that the country with the most people living in extreme poverty is Nigeria, at 86 million.
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In the past, the vast majority of the world population lived in conditions of extreme poverty.
The percentage of the global population living in absolute poverty fell from over 80% in 1800 to around 10% by 2015. According to UN estimates, roughly 734 million people or 10% remained under those conditions. The number had previously been measured as 1.9 billion in 1990, and 1.2 billion in 2008. Despite the significant number of individuals still below the international poverty line, these figures represent significant progress for the international community, as they reflect a decrease of more than one billion people over 15 years.
In public opinion surveys around the globe, people surveyed tend to think that extreme poverty has not decreased.
The reduction of extreme poverty and hunger was the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1), as set by the United Nations in 2000. Specifically, the target was to reduce the extreme poverty rate by half by 2015, a goal that was met five years ahead of schedule. In the Sustainable Development Goals, which succeeded the MDGs, the goal is to end extreme poverty in all its forms everywhere. With this declaration the international community, including the UN and the World Bank have adopted the target of ending extreme poverty by 2030.
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Definition.
Previous definitions.
In July 1993, Leandro Despouy, the then UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights made use of a definition he adapted from a 1987 report to the French Economic and Social Council by Fr. Joseph Wresinski, founder of the International Movement ATD Fourth World, distinguishing "lack of basic security" (poverty) and "chronic poverty" (extreme poverty), linking the eradication of extreme poverty by allowing people currently experiencing it a real opportunity to exercise all their human rights:
This definition was mentioned previously, in June 1989, in the preliminary report on the realization of economic, social and cultural rights by the UN Special Rapporteur Danilo Türk. It is still in use today, among others, in the current UN Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in September 2012.
Consumption-based definition.
Extreme poverty is defined by the international community as living below $1.90 a day, as measured in 2011 international prices (equivalent to $2.12 in 2018). This number, also known as the international poverty line, is periodically updated to account for inflation and differences in the cost of living; it was originally defined at $1.00 a day in 1996. The updates are made according to new price data to portray the costs of basic food, health services, clothing, and shelter around the world as accurately as possible. The latest revision was made in 2015 when the World Bank increased the line to international-$1.90.
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Because many of the world's poorest people do not have a monetary income, the poverty measurement is based on the monetary value of a person's "consumption". Otherwise the poverty measurement would be missing the home production of subsistence farmers that consume largely their own production.
Alternative definitions.
The $1.90/day extreme poverty line remains the most widely used metric as it highlights the reality of those in the most severe conditions. Although widely used by most international organizations, it has come under scrutiny due to a variety of factors. For example, it does not account for how far below the line people are, referred to as the depth of poverty. For this purpose, the same institutions publish data on the poverty gap.
The international poverty line is designed to stay constant over time, to allow comparisons between different years. It is therefore a measure of absolute poverty and is not measuring relative poverty. It is also not designed to capture how people view their own financial situation (known as the socially subjective poverty line). Moreover, the calculation of the poverty line relies on information about consumer prices to calculate purchasing power parity, which are very hard to measure and are necessarily debatable. As with all other metrics, there may also be missing data from the poorest and most fragile countries.
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Several alternative instruments for measuring extreme poverty have been suggested which incorporate other factors such as malnutrition and lack of access to a basic education. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), based on the Alkire-Foster Method, is published by the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI): it measures deprivation in basic needs and can be broken down to reflect both the incidence and the intensity of poverty. For example, under conventional measures, in both Ethiopia and Uzbekistan about 40% of the population is considered extremely poor, but based on the MPI, 90% of Ethiopians but only 2% of Uzbeks are in multidimensional poverty.
The MPI is useful for development officials to determine the most likely causes of poverty within a region, using the M0 measure of the method (which is calculated by multiplying the fraction of people in poverty by the fraction of dimensions they are deprived in). For example, in the Gaza Strip of Palestine, using the M0 measure of the Alkire-Foster method reveals that poverty in the region is primarily caused by a lack of access to electricity, lack of access to drinking water, and widespread overcrowding. In contrast, data from the Chhukha District of Bhutan reveals that income is a much larger contributor to poverty as opposed to other dimensions within the region. However, the MPI only presents data from 105 countries, so it cannot be used for global measurements.
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Current trends.
Getting to zero.
Using the World Bank definition of $1.90/day, , roughly 710 million people remained in extreme poverty (or roughly 1 in 10 people worldwide). Nearly half of them live in India and China, with more than 85% living in just 20 countries. Since the mid-1990s, there has been a steady decline in both the worldwide poverty rate and the total number of extreme poor. In 1990, the percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty was 43%, but in 2011, that percentage had dropped down to 21%. This halving of the extreme poverty rate falls in line with the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) proposed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called on the international community at the turn of the century to reduce the percentage of people in extreme poverty by half by 2015.
This reduction in extreme poverty took place most notably in China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Vietnam. These five countries accounted for the alleviation of 715 million people out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2010 – more than the global net total of roughly 700 million. This statistical oddity can be explained by the fact that the number of people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 290 million to 414 million over the same period. However, there have been many positive signs for extensive, global poverty reduction as well. Since 1999, the total number of extreme poor has declined by an average of 50 million per year. Moreover, in 2005, for the first time in recorded history, poverty rates began to fall in every region of the world, including Africa.
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As aforementioned, the number of people living in extreme poverty has reduced from 1.9 billion to 766 million over the span of the last decades. If we remain on our current trajectory, many economists predict we could reach global zero by 2030–2035, thus ending extreme poverty. Global zero entails a world in which fewer than 3% of the global population lives in extreme poverty (projected under most optimistic scenarios to be fewer than 200 million people). This zero figure is set at 3% in recognition of the fact that some amount of frictional (temporary) poverty will continue to exist, whether it is caused by political conflict or unexpected economic fluctuations, at least for the foreseeable future. However, the Brookings Institution notes that any projection about poverty more than a few years into the future runs the risk of being highly uncertain. This is because changes in consumption and distribution throughout the developing world over the next two decades could result in monumental shifts in global poverty, for better or worse.
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Others are more pessimistic about this possibility, predicting a range of 193 million to 660 million people still living in extreme poverty by 2035. Additionally, some believe the rate of poverty reduction will slow down in the developing world, especially in Africa, and as such it will take closer to five decades to reach global zero. Despite these reservations, several prominent international and national organizations, including the UN, the World Bank and the United States Federal Government (via USAID), have set a target of reaching global zero by the end of 2030.
More recent analyses in 2022 on real wages have questioned whether extreme poverty was a "natural" condition of humanity and decreased with the rise of capitalism.
Exacerbating factors.
There are a variety of factors that may reinforce or instigate the existence of extreme poverty, such as weak institutions, cycles of violence and a low level of growth. Recent World Bank research shows that some countries can get caught in a "fragility trap", in which self-reinforcing factors prevent the poorest nations from emerging from low-level equilibrium in the long run. Moreover, most of the reduction in extreme poverty over the past twenty years has taken place in countries that have not experienced a civil conflict or have had governing institutions with a strong capacity to actually govern. Thus, to end extreme poverty, it is also important to focus on the interrelated problems of fragility and conflict.
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USAID defines fragility as a government's lack of both legitimacy (the perception the government is adequate at doing its job) and effectiveness (how good the government is at maintaining law and order, in an equitable manner). As fragile nations are unable to equitably and effectively perform the functions of a state, these countries are much more prone to violent unrest and mass inequality. Additionally, in countries with high levels of inequality (a common problem in countries with inadequate governing institutions), much higher growth rates are needed to reduce the rate of poverty when compared with other nations. Additionally, if China and India are removed from the equation, up to 70% of the world's poor live in fragile states by some definitions of fragility. Some analysts project that extreme poverty will be increasingly concentrated in fragile, low-income states like Haiti, Yemen and the Central African Republic. However, some academics, such as Andy Sumner, say that extreme poverty will be increasingly concentrated in middle-income countries, creating a paradox where the world's poor do not actually live in the poorest countries.
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To help low-income earners, fragile states make the transition towards peace and prosperity, the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, endorsed by roughly forty countries and multilateral institutions, was created in 2011. This represents an important step towards redressing the problem of fragility as it was originally articulated by self-identified fragile states who called on the international community to not only "do things differently", but to also "do different things".
Civil conflict also remains a prime cause for the perpetuation of poverty throughout the developing world. Armed conflict can have severe effects on economic growth for many reasons such as the destruction of assets, destruction of livelihoods, creation of unwanted mass migration, and diversion of public resources towards war. Significantly, a country that experienced major violence during 1981–2005 had extreme poverty rates 21 percentage points higher than a country with no violence. On average, each civil conflict will cost a country roughly 30 years of GDP growth. Therefore, a renewed commitment from the international community to address the deteriorating situation in highly fragile states is necessary to both prevent the mass loss of life, but to also prevent the vicious cycle of extreme poverty.
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Population trends and dynamics (e.g. population growth) can also have a large impact on prospects for poverty reduction. According to the United Nations, "in addition to improving general health and well-being, analysis shows that meeting the reproductive health and contraceptive needs of all women in the developing world more than pays for itself").
In 2013, a prominent finding in a report by the World Bank was that extreme poverty is most prevalent in low-income countries. In these countries, the World Bank found that progress in poverty reduction is the slowest, the poor live under the worst conditions, and the most affected persons are children age 12 and under.
International initiatives.
Millennium Summit and Millennium Development Goals.
In September 2000, world leaders gathered at the Millennium Summit held in New York, launching the United Nations Millennium Project suggested by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Prior to the launch of the conference, the office of Secretary-General Annan released a report entitled "We The Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century". In this document, now widely known as the Millennium Report, Kofi Annan called on the international community to reduce the proportion of people in extreme poverty by half by 2015, a target that would affect over 1 billion people. Citing the close correlation between economic growth and the reduction of poverty in poor countries, Annan urged international leaders to indiscriminately target the problem of extreme poverty across every region. In charge of managing the project was Jeffrey Sachs, a noted development economist, who in 2005 released a plan for action called "Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals". Thomas Pogge criticized the 2000 Millennium Declaration for being less ambitious than a previous declaration from the World Food Summit due to using 1990 as the benchmark rather than 1996.
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Overall, there has been significant progress towards reducing extreme poverty, with the MDG1 target of reducing extreme poverty rates by half being met five years early, representing 700 million people being lifted out of extreme poverty from 1990 to 2010, with 1.2 billion people still remaining under those conditions. The notable exception to this trend was in Sub-Saharan Africa, the only region where the number of people living in extreme poverty rose from 290 million in 1990 to 414 million in 2010, comprising more than a third of those living in extreme poverty worldwide.
2005 World Summit.
The 2005 World Summit, held in September which was organized to measure international progress towards fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Notably, the conference brought together more than 170 Heads of State. While world leaders at the summit were encouraged by the reduction of poverty in some nations, they were concerned by the uneven decline of poverty within and among different regions of the globe. However, at the end of the summit, the conference attendees reaffirmed the UN's commitment to achieve the MDGs by 2015 and urged all supranational, national and non-governmental organizations to follow suit.
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Sustainable Development Goals.
As the expiration of the Millennium Development Goals approached in 2015, the UN convened a panel to advise on a Post-2015 Development Agenda, which led to a new set of 17 goals for 2030 titled the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first goal (SDG 1) is to "End poverty in all its forms everywhere."
The HLP report, entitled A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development, was published in May 2013. In the report, the HLP wrote that:
Ending extreme poverty is just the beginning, not the end. It is vital, but our vision must be broader: to start countries on the path of sustainable development – building on the foundations established by the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, and meeting a challenge that no country, developed or developing, has met so far. We recommend to the Secretary-General that deliberations on a new development agenda must be guided by the vision of eradicating extreme poverty once and for all, in the context of sustainable development.
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Therefore, the report determined that a central goal of the Post-Millennium Development agenda is to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. However, the report also emphasized that the MDGs were not enough on their own, as they did not "focus on the devastating effects of conflict and violence on development ... the importance to development of good governance and institution ... nor the need for inclusive growth..." Consequently, there now exists synergy between the policy position papers put forward by the United States (through USAID), the World Bank and the UN itself in terms of viewing fragility and a lack of good governance as exacerbating extreme poverty. However, in a departure from the views of other organizations, the commission also proposed that the UN focus not only on extreme poverty (a line drawn at $1.25), but also on a higher target, such as $2. The report notes this change could be made to reflect the fact that escaping extreme poverty is only a first step.
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Least developed country conferences.
The UN least developed country (LDC) conferences were a series of summits organized by the UN to promote the substantial and even development of the world's least developed countries.
Organizations working to end extreme poverty.
International organizations.
World Bank.
In 2013, the Board of Governors of the World Bank Group (WBG) set two overriding goals for the WBG to commit itself to in the future. First, to end extreme poverty by 2030, an objective that echoes the sentiments of the UN and the Obama administration. Additionally, the WBG set an interim target of reducing extreme poverty to below 9% by 2020. Second, to focus on growth among the bottom 40% of people, as opposed to standard GDP growth. This commitment ensures that the growth of the developing world lifts people out of poverty, rather than exacerbating inequality.
As the World Bank's primary focus is on delivering economic growth to enable equitable prosperity, its developments programs are primarily commercial-based in nature, as opposed to the UN. Since the World Bank recognizes better jobs will result in higher income, and thus less poverty, the WBG seeks to support employment training initiatives, small business development programs and strong labor protection laws. However, since much of the growth in the developing world has been inequitable, the World Bank has also begun teaming with client states to map out trends in inequality and to propose public policy changes that can level the playing field.
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Moreover, the World Bank engages in a variety of nutritional, transfer payments and transport-based initiatives. Children who experience under-nutrition from conception to two years of age have a much higher risk of physical and mental disability. Thus, they are often trapped in poverty and are unable to make a full contribution to the social and economic development of their communities as adults. The WBG estimates that as much as 3% of GDP can be lost as a result of under-nutrition among the poorest nations. To combat undernutrition, the WBG has partnered with UNICEF and the WHO to ensure all small children are fully fed. The WBG also offers conditional cash transfers to poor households who meet certain requirements such as maintaining children's healthcare or ensuring school attendance. Finally, the WBG understands investment in public transportation and better roads is key to breaking rural isolation, improving access to healthcare and providing better job opportunities for the World's poor.
United Nations.
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The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) works to synchronize the disparate international, national and non-governmental efforts to contest poverty. OCHA seeks to prevent "confusion" in relief operations and to ensure that the humanitarian response to disaster situations has greater accountability and predictability. To do so, OCHA has begun deploying Humanitarian Coordinators and Country Teams to provide a solid architecture for the international community to work through.
The United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) was created by the UN to provide food, clothing and healthcare to European children facing famine and disease in the immediate aftermath of World War II. After the UN General Assembly extended UNICEF's mandate indefinitely in 1953, it actively worked to help children in extreme poverty in more than 190 countries and territories to overcome the obstacles that poverty, violence, disease and discrimination place in a child's path. Its current focus areas are 1) Child survival & development 2) Basic education & gender equality 3) Children and HIV/AIDS and 4) Child protection.
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The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is mandated to lead and coordinate international action to protect refugees worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights of refugees by ensuring anyone can exercise the right to seek asylum in another state, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or resettle in a third country. The UNHCR operates in over 125 countries, helping approximately 33.9 million persons.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the largest agency dedicated to fighting hunger worldwide. On average, the WFP brings food assistance to more than 90 million people in 75 countries. The WFP not only strives to prevent hunger in the present, but also in the future by developing stronger communities which will make food even more secure on their own. The WFP has a range of expertise from Food Security Analysis, Nutrition, Food Procurement and Logistics.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, articulating evidence-based policy decisions and combating diseases that are induced from poverty, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Moreover, the WHO deals with pressing issues ranging from managing water safety, to dealing with maternal and newborn health.
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Governmental agencies.
USAID.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is the lead US government agency dedicated to ending extreme poverty. Currently the largest bilateral donor in the world, the United States channels the majority of its development assistance through USAID and the US Department of State. In President Obama's 2013 State of the Union address, he declared, "So the United States will join with our allies to eradicate such extreme poverty in the next two decades ... which is within our reach." In response to Obama's call to action, USAID has made ending extreme poverty central to its mission statement. Under its New Model of Development, USAID seeks to eradicate extreme poverty through the use of innovation in science and technology, by putting a greater emphasis on evidence based decision-making, and through leveraging the ingenuity of the private sector and global citizens.
A major initiative of the Obama administration is Power Africa, which aims to bring energy to 20 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa. By reaching out to its international partners, whether commercial or public, the US has leveraged over $14 billion in outside commitments after investing only US$7 billion of its own. To ensure that Power Africa reaches the region's poorest, the initiative engages in a transaction based approach to create systematic change. This includes expanding access to electricity to more than 20,000 additional households which already live without power.
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In terms of specific programming, USAID works in a variety of fields from preventing hunger, reducing HIV/AIDS, providing general health assistance and democracy assistance, as well as dealing with gender issues. To deal with food security, which affects roughly 842 million people (who go to bed hungry each night), USAID coordinates the Feed the Future Initiative (FtF). FtF aims to reduce poverty and under-nutrition each by 20% over five years. Because of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and a variety of congruent actors, the incidence of AIDS and HIV, which used to ravage Africa, reduced in scope and intensity. Through PEPFAR, the United States has ensured over five million people have received life-saving antiviral drugs, a significant proportion of the eight million people receiving treatment in relatively poor nations.
In terms of general health assistance, USAID has worked to reduce maternal mortality by 30%, under-five child mortality by 35%, and has accomplished a host of other goals. USAID also supports the gamut of democratic initiatives, from promoting human rights and accountable, fair governance, to supporting free and fair elections and the rule of law. In pursuit of these goals, USAID has increased global political participation by training more than 9,800 domestic election observers and providing civic education to more than 6.5 million people. Since 2012, the Agency has begun integrating critical gender perspectives across all aspects of its programming to ensure all USAID initiatives work to eliminate gender disparities. To do so, USAID seeks to increase the capability of women and girls to realize their rights and determine their own life outcomes. Moreover, USAID supports additional programs to improve women's access to capital and markets, builds theirs skills in agriculture, and supports women's desire to own businesses.
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Others.
Other major government development agencies with annual aid programmes of more than $10 billion include: GIZ (Germany), FCDO (United Kingdom), JICA (Japan), European Union and AFD (France).
Non-Governmental Organizations.
A multitude of non-governmental organizations operate in the field of extreme poverty, actively working to alleviate the poorest of the poor of their deprivation. To name but a few notable organizations: Save the Children, the Overseas Development Institute, Concern Worldwide, ONE, Trickle Up and Oxfam have all done a considerable amount of work in extreme poverty.
Save the Children is the leading international organization dedicated to helping the world's indigent children. In 2013, Save the Children reached over 143 million children through their work, including over 52 million children directly. Save the Children also recently released their own report titled "Getting to Zero", in which they argued the international community could feasibly do more than lift the world's poor above $1.25/day.
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The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is a UK based think tank on international development and humanitarian issues. ODI is dedicated to alleviating the suffering of the world's poor by providing high-quality research and practical policy advice to the World's development officials. ODI also recently released a paper entitled, "The Chronic Poverty Report 2014–2015: The road to zero extreme poverty", in which its authors assert that though the international communities' goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 is laudable, much more targeted resources will be necessary to reach said target. The report states that "To eradicate extreme poverty, massive global investment is required in social assistance, education and pro-poorest economic growth".
Concern Worldwide is an international humanitarian organization whose mission is to end extreme poverty by influencing decision makers at all levels of government (from local to international). Concern has also produced a report on extreme poverty in which they explain their own conception of extreme poverty from a NGO's standpoint. In this paper, named "How Concern Understands Extreme Poverty", the report's creators write that extreme poverty entails more than just living under $1.25/day, it also includes having a small number of assets and being vulnerable to severe negative shocks (whether natural or man made).
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ONE, the organization co-founded by Bono, is a non-profit organization funded almost entirely by foundations, individual philanthropists and corporations. ONE's goals include raising public awareness and working with political leaders to fight preventable diseases, increase government accountability and increase investment in nutrition. Finally, Trickle Up is a micro-enterprise development program targeted at those living on under $1.25/day, which provides the indigent with resources to build a sustainable livelihood through both direct financing and considerable training efforts.
Oxfam is a non-governmental organization that works prominently in Africa; their mission is to improve local community organizations and it works to reduce impediments to the development of the country. Oxfam helps families suffering from poverty receive food and healthcare to survive. There are many children in Africa experiencing growth stunting, and this is one example of an issue that Oxfam targets and aims to resolve.
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Analytical engine
The analytical engine was a proposed digital mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, which was a design for a simpler mechanical calculator.
The analytical engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete. In other words, the structure of the analytical engine was essentially the same as that which has dominated computer design in the electronic era. The analytical engine is one of the most successful achievements of Charles Babbage.
Babbage was never able to complete construction of any of his machines due to conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding. It was not until 1941 that Konrad Zuse built the first general-purpose computer, Z3, more than a century after Babbage had proposed the pioneering analytical engine in 1837.
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Design.
Babbage's first attempt at a mechanical computing device, the difference engine, was a special-purpose machine designed to tabulate logarithms and trigonometric functions by evaluating finite differences to create approximating polynomials. Construction of this machine was never completed; Babbage had conflicts with his chief engineer, Joseph Clement, and ultimately the British government withdrew its funding for the project.
During this project, Babbage realised that a much more general design, the analytical engine, was possible. The work on the design of the analytical engine started around 1833.
The input, consisting of programs ("formulae") and data, was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter, and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. It employed ordinary base-10 fixed-point arithmetic.
There was to be a store (that is, a memory) capable of holding 1,000 numbers of 40 decimal digits each (ca. 16.6 kB). An arithmetic unit (the "mill") would be able to perform all four arithmetic operations, plus comparisons and optionally square roots. Initially (1838) it was conceived as a difference engine curved back upon itself, in a generally circular layout, with the long store exiting off to one side. Later drawings (1858) depict a regularised grid layout. Like the central processing unit (CPU) in a modern computer, the mill would rely upon its own internal procedures, roughly equivalent to microcode in modern CPUs, to be stored in the form of pegs inserted into rotating drums called "barrels", to carry out some of the more complex instructions the user's program might specify.
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The programming language to be employed by users was akin to modern day assembly languages. Loops and conditional branching were possible, and so the language as conceived would have been Turing-complete as later defined by Alan Turing. Three different types of punch cards were used: one for arithmetical operations, one for numerical constants, and one for load and store operations, transferring numbers from the store to the arithmetical unit or back. There were three separate readers for the three types of cards. Babbage developed some two dozen programs for the analytical engine between 1837 and 1840, and one program later. These programs treat polynomials, iterative formulas, Gaussian elimination, and Bernoulli numbers.
In 1842, the Italian mathematician Luigi Federico Menabrea published a description of the engine in French, based on lectures Babbage gave when he visited Turin in 1840. In 1843, the description was translated into English and extensively annotated by Ada Lovelace, who had become interested in the engine eight years earlier. In recognition of her additions to Menabrea's paper, which included a way to calculate Bernoulli numbers using the machine (widely considered to be the first complete computer program), she has been described by many as the first computer programmer, although others have challenged this view.
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Construction.
Late in his life, Babbage sought ways to build a simplified version of the machine, and assembled a small part of it before his death in 1871.
In 1878, a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science described the analytical engine as "a marvel of mechanical ingenuity", but recommended against constructing it. The committee acknowledged the usefulness and value of the machine, but could not estimate the cost of building it, and were unsure whether the machine would function correctly after being built.
Intermittently from 1880 to 1910, Babbage's son Henry Prevost Babbage was constructing a part of the mill and the printing apparatus. In 1910, it was able to calculate a (faulty) list of multiples of pi. This constituted only a small part of the whole engine; it was not programmable and had no storage. (Popular images of this section have sometimes been mislabelled, implying that it was the entire mill or even the entire engine.) Henry Babbage's "analytical engine mill" is on display at the Science Museum in London. Henry also proposed building a demonstration version of the full engine, with a smaller storage capacity: "perhaps for a first machine ten (columns) would do, with fifteen wheels in each". Such a version could manipulate 20 numbers of 25 digits each, and what it could be told to do with those numbers could still be impressive. "It is only a question of cards and time", wrote Henry Babbage in 1888, "... and there is no reason why (twenty thousand) cards should not be used if necessary, in an analytical engine for the purposes of the mathematician".
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In 1991, the London Science Museum built a complete and working specimen of Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, a design that incorporated refinements Babbage discovered during the development of the analytical engine. This machine was built using materials and engineering tolerances that would have been available to Babbage, quelling the suggestion that Babbage's designs could not have been produced using the manufacturing technology of his time.
In October 2010, John Graham-Cumming started a "Plan 28" campaign to raise funds by "public subscription" to enable serious historical and academic study of Babbage's plans, with a view to then build and test a fully working virtual design which will then in turn enable construction of the physical analytical engine. As of May 2016, actual construction had not been attempted, since no consistent understanding could yet be obtained from Babbage's original design drawings. In particular it was unclear whether it could handle the indexed variables which were required for Lovelace's Bernoulli program. By 2017, the "Plan 28" effort reported that a searchable database of all catalogued material was available, and an initial review of Babbage's voluminous Scribbling Books had been completed.
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Many of Babbage's original drawings have been digitised and are publicly available online.
Instruction set.
Babbage is not known to have written down an explicit set of instructions for the engine in the manner of a modern processor manual. Instead he showed his programs as lists of states during their execution, showing what operator was run at each step with little indication of how the control flow would be guided.
Allan G. Bromley has assumed that the card deck could be read in forwards and backwards directions as a function of conditional branching after testing for conditions, which would make the engine Turing-complete:
...the cards could be ordered to move forward and reverse (and hence to loop)...
The introduction for the first time, in 1845, of user operations for a variety of service functions including, most importantly, an effective system for user control of looping in user programs.
There is no indication how the direction of turning of the operation and variable cards is specified. In the absence of other evidence I have had to adopt the minimal default assumption that both the operation and variable cards can only be turned backward as is necessary to implement the loops used in Babbage's sample programs. There would be no mechanical or microprogramming difficulty in placing the direction of motion under the control of the user.
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In their emulator of the engine, Fourmilab say:
The Engine's Card Reader is not constrained to simply process the cards in a chain one after another from start to finish. It can, in addition, directed by the very cards it reads and advised by whether the Mill's run-up lever is activated, either advance the card chain forward, skipping the intervening cards, or backward, causing previously-read cards to be processed once again.
This emulator does provide a written symbolic instruction set, though this has been constructed by its authors rather than based on Babbage's original works. For example, a factorial program would be written as:
N0 6
N1 1
N2 1
L1
L0
S1
L0
L2
S0
L2
L0
CB?11
where the CB is the conditional branch instruction or "combination card" used to make the control flow jump, in this case backward by 11 cards.
Influence.
Predicted influence.
Babbage understood that the existence of an automatic computer would kindle interest in the field now known as algorithmic efficiency, writing in his "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher", "As soon as an analytical engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of the science. Whenever any result is sought by its aid, the question will then arise—By what course of calculation can these results be arrived at by the machine in the "shortest time"?"
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Computer science.
From 1872, Henry continued diligently with his father's work and then intermittently in retirement in 1875.
Percy Ludgate wrote about the engine in 1914 and published his own design for an analytical engine in 1909. It was drawn up in detail, but never built, and the drawings have never been found. Ludgate's engine would be much smaller (about than Babbage's, and hypothetically would be capable of multiplying two 20-decimal-digit numbers in about six seconds.
In his work "Essays on Automatics" (1914) Leonardo Torres Quevedo, inspired by Babbage, designed a theoretical electromechanical calculating machine which was to be controlled by a read-only program. The paper also contains the idea of floating-point arithmetic. In 1920, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the arithmometer, Torres presented in Paris the electromechanical arithmometer, which consisted of an arithmetic unit connected to a (possibly remote) typewriter, on which commands could be typed and the results printed automatically.
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Vannevar Bush's paper "Instrumental Analysis" (1936) included several references to Babbage's work. In the same year he started the Rapid Arithmetical Machine project to investigate the problems of constructing an electronic digital computer.
Despite this groundwork, Babbage's work fell into historical obscurity, and the analytical engine was unknown to builders of electromechanical and electronic computing machines in the 1930s and 1940s when they began their work, resulting in the need to re-invent many of the architectural innovations Babbage had proposed. Howard Aiken, who built the quickly-obsoleted electromechanical calculator, the Harvard Mark I, between 1937 and 1945, praised Babbage's work likely as a way of enhancing his own stature, but knew nothing of the analytical engine's architecture during the construction of the Mark I, and considered his visit to the constructed portion of the analytical engine "the greatest disappointment of my life". The Mark I showed no influence from the analytical engine and lacked the analytical engine's most prescient architectural feature, conditional branching. J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly similarly were not aware of the details of Babbage's analytical engine work prior to the completion of their design for the first electronic general-purpose computer, the ENIAC.
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Comparison to other early computers.
If the analytical engine had been built, it would have been digital, programmable and Turing-complete. It would, however, have been very slow. Luigi Federico Menabrea reported in "Sketch of the Analytical Engine": "Mr. Babbage believes he can, by his engine, form the product of two numbers, each containing twenty figures, in three minutes".
By comparison the Harvard Mark I could perform the same task in just six seconds (though it is debatable that computer is Turing complete; the ENIAC, which is, would also have been faster). A modern CPU could do the same thing in under a billionth of a second.
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Augustus
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire. He reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. The reign of Augustus initiated an imperial cult, as well as an era of imperial peace (the or ) in which the Roman world was largely free of armed conflict. The Principate system of government was established during his reign and lasted until the Crisis of the Third Century.
Octavian was born into an equestrian branch of the plebeian Octavia. His maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, and Octavian was named in Caesar's will as his adopted son and heir; as a result, he inherited Caesar's name, estate, and the loyalty of his legions. He, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat the assassins of Caesar. Following their victory at the Battle of Philippi (42 BC), the Triumvirate divided the Roman Republic among themselves and ruled as "de facto" dictators. The Triumvirate was eventually torn apart by the competing ambitions of its members; Lepidus was exiled in 36 BC, and Antony was defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Antony and his wife Cleopatra, the Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, killed themselves during Octavian's invasion of Egypt, which then became a Roman province.
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After the demise of the Second Triumvirate, Augustus restored the outward facade of the free republic, with governmental power vested in the Roman Senate, the executive magistrates and the legislative assemblies, yet he maintained autocratic authority by having the Senate grant him lifetime tenure as commander-in-chief, tribune and censor. A similar ambiguity is seen in his chosen names, the implied rejection of monarchical titles whereby he called himself 'First Citizen' juxtaposed with his adoption of the title Augustus.
Augustus dramatically enlarged the empire, annexing Egypt, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Raetia, expanding possessions in Africa, and completing the conquest of Hispania, but he suffered a major setback in Germania. Beyond the frontiers, he secured the empire with a buffer region of client states and made peace with the Parthian Empire through diplomacy. He reformed the Roman system of taxation, developed networks of roads with an official courier system, established a standing army, established the Praetorian Guard as well as official police and fire-fighting services for Rome, and rebuilt much of the city during his reign. Augustus died in AD 14 at age 75, probably from natural causes. Persistent rumors, substantiated somewhat by deaths in the imperial family, have claimed his wife Livia poisoned him. He was succeeded as emperor by his adopted son Tiberius, Livia's son and former husband of Augustus's only biological child, Julia.
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Name.
As a consequence of Roman customs, society, and personal preference, Augustus ( ) was known by many names throughout his life:
Early life.
He was born in Rome on 23 September 63 BC. His paternal family was from the Volscian town of Velletri, approximately south-east of the city. He was born at Ox Head, a small property on the Palatine Hill, very close to the Roman Forum. In his childhood, he received the cognomen "Thurinus", possibly commemorating his father's victory at Thurii over a rebellious band of slaves which occurred a few years after his birth. Suetonius wrote: "There are many indications that the Octavian family was in days of old a distinguished one at Velitrae; for not only was a street in the most frequented part of town long ago called Octavian, but an altar was shown there besides, consecrated by an Octavius. This man was leader in a war with a neighbouring town ..."
Due to the crowded nature of Rome at the time, Octavian was taken to his father's home village at Velletri to be raised. Octavian mentions his father's equestrian family only briefly in his memoirs. His paternal great-grandfather Octavius was a military tribune in Sicily during the Second Punic War. His grandfather had served in several local political offices. His father, also named Octavius, had been governor of Macedonia. His mother, Atia, was the niece of Julius Caesar.
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His father died in 59 BC when Octavian was four years old. His mother married a former governor of Syria, Lucius Marcius Philippus. Philippus claimed descent from Alexander the Great and was elected consul in 56 BC. Philippus never showed much interest in young Octavian. Because of this, Octavian was raised by his grandmother, Julia, the sister of Julius Caesar. Julia died in 52 or 51 BC, and Octavian delivered the funeral oration for his grandmother. From this point, his mother and stepfather took a more active role in raising him. He donned the 'toga of manhood' four years later and was elected to the College of Pontiffs in 47 BC. The following year he was put in charge of the Greek games that were staged in honour of the Temple of Venus Genetrix, built by Julius Caesar.
According to Nicolaus of Damascus, Octavian wished to join Caesar's staff for his campaign in Africa but gave way when his mother protested. In 46 BC, she consented for him to join Caesar in Hispania, where he planned to fight the forces of Pompey, Caesar's late enemy, but Octavian fell ill and was unable to travel. When he had recovered, he sailed to the front but was shipwrecked. After coming ashore with a handful of companions, he crossed hostile territory to Caesar's camp, which impressed Caesar considerably. Velleius Paterculus reports that after that time, Caesar allowed the young man to share his carriage. When back in Rome, Caesar deposited a new will with the Vestal Virgins, naming Octavian as the prime beneficiary.
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Rise to power.
Heir to Caesar.
Octavian was studying and undergoing military training in Apollonia, Illyria, when Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC. He rejected the advice of some army officers to take refuge with the troops in Macedonia and sailed to Italy to ascertain whether he had any potential political fortunes or security. Caesar had no living legitimate children under Roman law and so had adopted Octavian, his grand-nephew, in his will, making him his primary heir. Mark Antony later charged that Octavian had earned his adoption by Caesar through sexual favours, though Suetonius describes Antony's accusation as political slander. This form of slander was popular during this time in the Roman Republic to demean and discredit political opponents by accusing them of having an inappropriate sexual affair. After landing at Lupiae near Brundisium, Octavian learned the contents of Caesar's will, and only then did he decide to become Caesar's political heir as well as heir to two-thirds of his estate.
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Upon his adoption, Octavian assumed his great-uncle's name Gaius Julius Caesar. Roman citizens adopted into a new family usually retained their old nomen in cognomen form (e.g., for one who had been an Octavius, for one who had been an Aemilius. See Roman naming conventions for adoptions). However, though some of his contemporaries did, there is no evidence that Octavian officially used the name , as it would have made his adoptive origins too obvious. Historians usually refer to the new Caesar as "Octavian" during the time between his adoption and his assumption of the name Augustus in 27 BC in order to avoid confusing the dead dictator with his heir.
Octavian could not rely on his limited funds to make a successful entry into the upper echelons of the Roman political hierarchy. After a warm welcome by Caesar's soldiers at Brundisium, Octavian demanded a portion of the funds that were allotted by Caesar for the intended war against the Parthian Empire in the Middle East. This amounted to 700 million sesterces stored at Brundisium, the staging ground in Italy for military operations in the east. A later senatorial investigation into the disappearance of the public funds took no action against Octavian since he subsequently used that money to raise troops against the Senate's archenemy Mark Antony. Octavian made another bold move in 44 BC when, without official permission, he appropriated the annual tribute that had been sent from Rome's Near Eastern province to Italy.
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Octavian began to bolster his personal forces with Caesar's veteran legionaries and with troops designated for the Parthian war, gathering support by emphasizing his status as heir to Caesar. On his march to Rome through Italy, Octavian's presence and newly acquired funds attracted many, winning over Caesar's former veterans stationed in Campania. By June, he had gathered an army of 3,000 loyal veterans, paying each a bonus of 500 .
Growing tensions.
Arriving in Rome on 6 May 44 BC, Octavian found consul Mark Antony, Caesar's former colleague, in an uneasy truce with the dictator's assassins. They had been granted a general amnesty on 17 March, yet Antony had succeeded in driving most of them out of Rome with an inflammatory eulogy at Caesar's funeral, mounting public opinion against the assassins.
Mark Antony was amassing political support, but Octavian still had the opportunity to rival him as the leading member of the faction supporting Caesar. Antony had lost the support of many Romans and supporters of Caesar when he initially opposed the motion to elevate Caesar to divine status. It is alleged that Antony refused to hand over the money due Octavian as Caesar's adopted heir, possibly on grounds that it would take time to disentangle it from state funds. During the summer, Octavian won the support of Caesarian veterans and also made common cause with those senators—many of whom were themselves former Caesarians—who perceived Antony as a threat to the state. After an abortive attempt by the veterans to reconcile Octavian and Antony, Antony's bellicose edicts against Brutus and Cassius alienated him from the moderate Caesarians in the Senate, who feared a renewed civil war. In September, Marcus Tullius Cicero began to attack Antony in a series of speeches portraying him as a threat to the republican order.
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First conflict with Antony.
With opinion in Rome turning against him and his year of consular power nearing its end, Antony attempted to pass laws that would assign him the province of Cisalpine Gaul. Octavian meanwhile built up a private army in Italy by recruiting Caesarian veterans, and on 28 November he won over two of Antony's legions with the enticing offer of monetary gain.
In the face of Octavian's large and capable force, Antony saw the danger of staying in Rome and, to the relief of the Senate, he left Rome for Cisalpine Gaul, which was to be handed to him on 1 January. However, the province had earlier been assigned to Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, one of Caesar's assassins, who now refused to yield to Antony. Antony besieged him at Mutina and rejected the resolutions passed by the Senate to stop the fighting. The Senate had no army to enforce their resolutions. This provided an opportunity for Octavian, who already was known to have armed forces. Cicero also defended Octavian against Antony's taunts about Octavian's lack of noble lineage and aping of Julius Caesar's name, stating "we have no more brilliant example of traditional piety among our youth."
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At the urging of Cicero, the Senate inducted Octavian as senator on 1 January 43 BC, yet he also was given the power to vote alongside the former consuls. In addition, Octavian was granted 'commanding power' which legalized his command of troops, sending him to relieve the siege along with Hirtius and Pansa (the consuls for 43 BC). He assumed the fasces on 7 January, a date that he would later commemorate as the beginning of his public career. Antony's forces were defeated at the battles of Forum Gallorum (14 April) and Mutina (21 April), forcing Antony to retreat to Transalpine Gaul. Both consuls were killed, however, leaving Octavian in sole command of their armies. These victories earned him his first acclamation as , a title reserved for victorious commanders.
The Senate heaped many more rewards on Decimus Brutus than on Octavian for defeating Antony, then attempted to give command of the consular legions to Decimus Brutus. In response, Octavian stayed in the Po Valley and refused to aid any further offensive against Antony. In July, an embassy of centurions sent by Octavian entered Rome and demanded the consulship left vacant by Hirtius and Pansa and also that the decree should be rescinded which declared Antony a public enemy. When this was refused, he marched on the city with eight legions. He encountered no military opposition in Rome and on 19 August 43 BC was elected consul with his relative Quintus Pedius as co-consul. Meanwhile, Antony formed an alliance with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another leading Caesarian.
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Second Triumvirate.
Proscriptions.
In a meeting near Bononia in October 43 BC, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate. Their powers were made official by the Senate on 27 November. This explicit arrogation of special powers lasting five years was then legalised by law passed by the plebs, unlike the unofficial First Triumvirate formed by Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Marcus Licinius Crassus. The triumvirs then set in motion proscriptions, in which between 130 and 300 senators and 2,000 were branded as outlaws and deprived of their property and, for those who failed to escape, their lives. This decree issued by the triumvirate was motivated in part by a need to raise money to pay the salaries of their troops for the upcoming conflict against Caesar's assassins, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Rewards for their arrest gave incentive for Romans to capture those proscribed, while the assets and properties of those arrested were seized by the triumvirs.
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Battle of Philippi and division of territory.
On 1 January 42 BC, the Senate posthumously recognised Julius Caesar as a divinity of the Roman state, . Octavian was able to further his cause by emphasizing the fact that he was 'Son of the Divine'. Antony and Octavian then sent twenty-eight legions by sea to face the armies of Brutus and Cassius, who had built their base of power in Greece. After two battles at Philippi in Macedonia in October 42, the Caesarian army was victorious and Brutus and Cassius committed suicide. Mark Antony later used the examples of these battles as a means to belittle Octavian, as both battles were decisively won with the use of Antony's forces. In addition to claiming responsibility for both victories, Antony branded Octavian as a coward for handing over his direct military control to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa instead.
After Philippi, a new territorial arrangement was made among the members of the Second Triumvirate. Gaul and the province of Hispania were placed in the hands of Octavian. Antony travelled east to Egypt where he allied himself with Queen Cleopatra, the former lover of Julius Caesar and mother of Caesar's son Caesarion. Lepidus was left with the province of Africa, stymied by Antony, who conceded Hispania to Octavian instead.
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Octavian was left to decide where in Italy to settle the tens of thousands of veterans of the Macedonian campaign, whom the triumvirs had promised to discharge. The tens of thousands who had fought on the republican side with Brutus and Cassius could easily ally with a political opponent of Octavian if not appeased, and they also required land. There was no more government-controlled land to allot as settlements for their soldiers, so Octavian had to choose one of two options: alienating many Roman citizens by confiscating their land, or alienating many Roman soldiers who could mount a considerable opposition against him in the Roman heartland. Octavian chose the former. There were as many as eighteen Roman towns affected by the new settlements, with entire populations driven out or at least given partial evictions.
Rebellion and marriage alliances.
There was widespread dissatisfaction with Octavian over these settlements of his soldiers, and this encouraged many to rally at the side of Lucius Antonius, who was brother of Mark Antony and supported by a majority in the Senate. Meanwhile, Octavian asked for a divorce from Claudia, the daughter of Fulvia (Antony's wife) and her first husband Publius Clodius Pulcher. He returned Claudia to her mother, claiming that their marriage had never been consummated. Fulvia decided to take action. Together with Lucius Antonius, she raised an army in Italy to fight for Antony's rights against Octavian. Lucius and Fulvia took a political and martial gamble in opposing Octavian however, since the Roman army still depended on the triumvirs for their salaries. Lucius and his allies ended up in a defensive siege at Perusia, where Octavian forced them into surrender in early 40 BC.
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Lucius and his army were spared because of his kinship with Antony, the strongman of the East, while Fulvia was exiled to Sicyon. Octavian showed no mercy, however, for the mass of allies loyal to Lucius. On 15 March, the anniversary of Julius Caesar's assassination, he had 300 Roman senators and equestrians executed for allying with Lucius. Perusia also was pillaged and burned as a warning for others. This bloody event sullied Octavian's reputation and was criticised by many, such as Augustan poet Sextus Propertius.
Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey and still a renegade general, following Julius Caesar's victory over his father, had established himself in Sicily and Sardinia as part of an agreement reached with the Second Triumvirate in 39 BC. Both Antony and Octavian were vying for an alliance with Pompeius. Octavian succeeded in a temporary alliance in 40 BC when he married Scribonia, a sister (or daughter) of Pompeius's father-in-law Lucius Scribonius Libo. Scribonia gave birth to Octavian's only natural child, Julia, the same day that he divorced her to marry Livia Drusilla, little more than a year after their marriage.
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While in Egypt, Antony had been engaged in an affair with Cleopatra and had fathered three children with her. Aware of his deteriorating relationship with Octavian, Antony left Cleopatra; he sailed to Italy in 40 BC with a large force to oppose Octavian, laying siege to Brundisium. This new conflict proved untenable for both Octavian and Antony, however. Their centurions, who had become important figures politically, refused to fight because of their Caesarian cause, while the legions under their command followed suit. Meanwhile, in Sicyon, Antony's wife Fulvia died of a sudden illness while Antony was en route to meet her. Fulvia's death and the mutiny of their centurions allowed the two remaining triumvirs to effect a reconciliation.
In the autumn of 40, Octavian and Antony approved the Treaty of Brundisium, by which Lepidus would remain in Africa, Antony in the East, Octavian in the West. The Italian Peninsula was left open to all for the recruitment of soldiers, but in reality this provision was useless for Antony in the East. To further cement relations of alliance with Antony, Octavian gave his sister, Octavia Minor, in marriage to Antony in late 40 BC.
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War with Sextus Pompeius.
Sextus Pompeius threatened Octavian in Italy by denying shipments of grain through the Mediterranean Sea to the peninsula. Pompeius's own son was put in charge as naval commander in the effort to cause widespread famine in Italy. Pompeius's control over the sea prompted him to take on the name 'son of Neptune'. A temporary peace agreement was reached in 39 BC with the Pact of Misenum; the blockade on Italy was lifted once Octavian granted Pompeius Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, and the Peloponnese, and ensured him a future position as consul for 35 BC.
The territorial agreement between the triumvirate and Sextus Pompeius began to crumble once Octavian divorced Scribonia and married Livia on 17 January 38 BC. One of Pompeius's naval commanders betrayed him and handed over Corsica and Sardinia to Octavian. Octavian lacked the resources to confront Pompeius alone, so an agreement was reached with the Second Triumvirate's extension for another five-year period beginning in 37 BC.
In supporting Octavian, Antony expected to gain support for his own campaign against the Parthian Empire, desiring to avenge Rome's defeat at Carrhae in 53 BC. In an agreement reached at Tarentum, Antony provided 120 ships for Octavian to use against Pompeius, while Octavian was to send 20,000 legionaries to Antony for use against Parthia. Octavian sent only a tenth of those promised, which Antony viewed as an intentional provocation.
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Octavian and Lepidus launched a joint operation against Sextus in Sicily in 36 BC. Despite setbacks for Octavian, the naval fleet of Sextus Pompeius was almost entirely destroyed on 3 September by General Agrippa at the naval battle of Naulochus. Sextus fled to the east with his remaining forces, where he was captured and executed in Miletus by one of Antony's generals the following year. As Lepidus and Octavian accepted the surrender of Pompeius's troops, Lepidus attempted to claim Sicily for himself, ordering Octavian to leave. Lepidus's troops deserted him, however, and defected to Octavian since they were weary of fighting and were enticed by Octavian's promises of money.
Lepidus surrendered to Octavian and was permitted to retain the office of , the head of the college of priests, but was ejected from the Triumvirate. His public career at an end, he effectively was exiled to a villa at Cape Circei in Italy. The Roman dominions were divided between Octavian in the West and Antony in the East. Octavian ensured Rome's citizens of their rights to property in order to maintain peace and stability in his portion of the empire. This time, he settled his discharged soldiers outside of Italy, while also returning 30,000 slaves to their former Roman owners—slaves who had fled to join Pompeius's army and navy. Octavian had the Senate grant him, his wife, and his sister tribunal immunity, or , in order to ensure his own safety and that of Livia and Octavia once he returned to Rome.
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War with Antony and Cleopatra.
Meanwhile, Antony's campaign turned disastrous against Parthia, tarnishing his image as a leader, and the mere 2,000 legionaries sent by Octavian to Antony were hardly enough to replenish his forces. On the other hand, Cleopatra could restore his army to full strength; he already was engaged in a romantic affair with her, so he decided to send Octavia back to Rome. Octavian used this to spread propaganda implying that Antony was becoming less than Roman because he rejected a legitimate Roman spouse for an "Oriental paramour". In 36 BC, Octavian used a political ploy to make himself look less autocratic and Antony more the villain by proclaiming that the civil wars were coming to an end and that he would step down as triumvir—if only Antony would do the same. Antony refused.
Roman troops captured the Kingdom of Armenia in 34 BC, and Antony made his son Alexander Helios the ruler of Armenia. He also awarded the title "Queen of Kings" to Cleopatra, acts that Octavian used to convince the Roman Senate that Antony had ambitions to diminish the preeminence of Rome. Octavian became consul once again on 1 January 33 BC, and he opened the following session in the Senate with a vehement attack on Antony's grants of titles and territories to his relatives and to his queen.
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The breach between Antony and Octavian prompted a large portion of the senators, as well as both of that year's consuls, to leave Rome and defect to Antony. However, Octavian received two key deserters from Antony in the autumn of 32 BC: Munatius Plancus and Marcus Titius. These defectors gave Octavian the information that he needed to confirm with the Senate all the accusations that he made against Antony. Octavian forcibly entered the temple of the Vestal Virgins and seized Antony's secret will, which he promptly publicized. The will would have given away Roman-conquered territories as kingdoms for his sons to rule and designated Alexandria as the site for a tomb for him and his queen. In late 32 BC, the Senate officially revoked Antony's powers as consul and declared war on Cleopatra's regime in Egypt.
In early 31 BC, Antony and Cleopatra were temporarily stationed in Greece when Octavian gained a preliminary victory: the navy successfully ferried troops across the Adriatic Sea under the command of Agrippa. Agrippa cut off Antony and Cleopatra's main force from their supply routes at sea, while Octavian landed on the mainland opposite the island of Corcyra (modern Corfu) and marched south. Trapped on land and sea, deserters of Antony's army fled to Octavian's side daily while Octavian's forces were comfortable enough to make preparations.
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Antony's fleet sailed through the bay of Actium on the western coast of Greece in a desperate attempt to break free of the naval blockade. It was there that Antony's fleet faced the much larger fleet of smaller, more maneuverable ships under commanders Agrippa and Gaius Sosius in the Battle of Actium on 2 September 31 BC. Antony and his remaining forces were spared by a last-ditch effort from Cleopatra's fleet that had been waiting nearby.
A year later, Octavian defeated their forces in Alexandria on 1 August 30 BC—after which Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide. Antony fell on his own sword and was taken by his soldiers back to Alexandria where he died in Cleopatra's arms. Cleopatra died soon after by poisoning, contrary to the popular belief that she was bitten by an asp. Octavian had exploited his position as Caesar's heir to further his own political career, and he was well aware of the dangers in allowing another person to do the same. He therefore followed the advice of the Greek philosopher Arius Didymus that "two Caesars are one too many", ordering Caesarion killed while sparing Cleopatra's children by Antony, with the exception of Antony's older son. Octavian had previously shown little mercy to surrendered enemies and acted in ways that had proven unpopular with the Roman people, yet he was given credit for pardoning many of his opponents after the Battle of Actium.
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Sole ruler of Rome.
After Actium and the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian was in a position to rule the entire republic under an unofficial principate—but he had to achieve this through incremental power gains. He did so by courting the Senate and the people while upholding the republican traditions of Rome, appearing that he was not aspiring to dictatorship or monarchy. Marching into Rome, Octavian and Agrippa were elected as consuls by the Senate.
Years of civil war had left Rome in a state of near lawlessness, but the republic was not prepared to accept the control of Octavian as a despot. At the same time, Octavian could not give up his authority without risking further civil wars among the Roman generals, and even if he desired no position of authority his position demanded that he look to the well-being of the city of Rome and the Roman provinces. Octavian's aims from this point forward were to return Rome to a state of stability, traditional legality, and civility by lifting the overt political pressure imposed on the courts of law and ensuring free elections—in name at least.
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First settlement.
On 13 January 27 BC, Octavian made a show of returning full power to the Roman Senate and relinquishing his control of the Roman provinces and their armies. Under his consulship, however, the Senate had little power in initiating legislation by introducing bills for senatorial debate. Octavian was no longer in direct control of the provinces and their armies, but he retained the loyalty of active duty soldiers and veterans alike. The careers of many clients and adherents depended on his patronage, as his financial power was unrivaled in the Roman Republic. Historian Werner Eck states:
To a large extent, the public was aware of the vast financial resources that Octavian commanded. He failed to encourage enough senators to finance the building and maintenance of networks of roads in Italy in 20 BC, but he undertook direct responsibility for them. This was publicized on the Roman currency issued in 16 BC, after he donated vast amounts of money to the , the public treasury.
According to historian H. H. Scullard, however, Octavian's power was based on the exercise of "a predominant military power and ... the ultimate sanction of his authority was force, however much the fact was disguised." The Senate proposed to Octavian, the victor of Rome's civil wars, that he once again assume command of the provinces. The Senate's proposal was a ratification of Octavian's extra-constitutional power. Through the Senate, Octavian was able to continue the appearance of a still-functional constitution. Feigning reluctance, he accepted a ten-year responsibility of overseeing provinces that were considered chaotic. The provinces ceded to Augustus for that ten-year period comprised much of the conquered Roman world, including all of Hispania and Gaul, Syria, Cilicia, Cyprus, and Egypt. Moreover, command of these provinces provided Octavian with control over the majority of Rome's legions.
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While Octavian acted as consul in Rome, he dispatched senators to the provinces under his command as his representatives to manage provincial affairs and ensure that his orders were carried out. The provinces not under Octavian's control were overseen by governors chosen by the Roman Senate. Octavian became the most powerful political figure in the city of Rome and in most of its provinces, but he did not have a monopoly on political and martial power. The Senate still controlled North Africa, an important regional producer of grain, as well as Illyria and Macedonia, two strategic regions with several legions. However, the Senate had control of only five or six legions distributed among three senatorial proconsuls, compared to the twenty legions under the control of Octavian, and their control of these regions did not amount to any political or military challenge to Octavian. The Senate's control over some of the Roman provinces helped maintain a republican facade for the autocratic principate. Also, Octavian's control of entire provinces followed republican-era precedents for the objective of securing peace and creating stability, in which such prominent Romans as Pompey had been granted similar military powers in times of crisis and instability.
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Change to Augustus.
On 16 January 27 BC the Senate gave Octavian the new title of . , from the Latin 'to increase', can be translated as 'illustrious one' or 'sublime'. It was a title of religious authority rather than political one, and it indicated that Octavian now approached divinity. His name of Augustus was also more favourable than , the previous one which he styled for himself in reference to the story of the legendary founder of Rome, which symbolised a second founding of Rome. The title of was associated too strongly with notions of monarchy and kingship, an image that Octavian tried to avoid. The Senate also confirmed his position as , which originally meant the member of the Senate with the highest precedence, but in this case it became an almost regnal title for a leader who was first in charge. The honorific was inherited by all future emperors and became the "de facto" main title of the emperor. As a result, modern historians usually regard this event as the beginning of his reign as "emperor". Augustus himself appears to have reckoned his "reign" from 27 BC.
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Augustus styled himself as 'Commander Caesar son of the deified one'. With this title, he boasted his familial link to deified Julius Caesar, and the use of signified a permanent link to the Roman tradition of victory. He transformed , a cognomen for one branch of the Julian family, into a new family line that began with him.
Augustus was granted the right to hang the (civic crown) above his door and to have laurels drape his doorposts. However, he renounced flaunting insignia of power such as holding a scepter, wearing a diadem, or wearing the golden crown and purple toga of his predecessor Julius Caesar. If he refused to symbolize his power by donning and bearing these items on his person, the Senate nonetheless awarded him with a golden shield displayed in the meeting hall of the Curia, bearing the inscription – 'valor, piety, clemency, and justice'.
Second settlement.
By 23 BC, some of the un-republican implications were becoming apparent concerning the settlement of 27 BC. Augustus's retention of an annual consulate drew attention to his "de facto" dominance over the Roman political system and cut in half the opportunities for others to achieve what was still nominally the preeminent position in the Roman state. Further, he was causing political problems by desiring to have his nephew Marcus Claudius Marcellus follow in his footsteps and eventually assume the principate in his turn, alienating his three greatest supporters: Agrippa, Maecenas, and Livia. He appointed noted republican Calpurnius Piso (who had fought against Julius Caesar and supported Cassius and Brutus) as co-consul in 23 BC, after his choice Aulus Terentius Varro Murena died unexpectedly.
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In the late spring Augustus had a severe illness and on his supposed deathbed made arrangements that would ensure the continuation of the principate in some form, while allaying senators' suspicions of his anti-republicanism. Augustus prepared to hand down his signet ring to his favored general Agrippa. However, Augustus handed over to his co-consul Piso all of his official documents, an account of public finances, and authority over listed troops in the provinces while Augustus's supposedly favored nephew Marcellus came away empty-handed. This was a surprise to many who believed Augustus would have named an heir to his position as an unofficial emperor.
Augustus bestowed only properties and possessions to his designated heirs, as an obvious system of institutionalized imperial inheritance would have provoked resistance and hostility among the republican-minded Romans fearful of monarchy. With regards to the principate, it was obvious to Augustus that Marcellus was not ready to take on his position; nonetheless, by giving his signet ring to Agrippa, Augustus intended to signal to the legions that Agrippa was to be his successor and that they should continue to obey Agrippa, constitutional procedure notwithstanding.
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Soon after his bout of illness subsided, Augustus gave up his consulship. The only other times Augustus would serve as consul would be in the years 5 and 2 BC, both times to introduce his grandsons into public life. This was a clever ploy by Augustus; ceasing to serve as one of two annually elected consuls allowed aspiring senators a better chance to attain the consular position while allowing Augustus to exercise wider patronage within the senatorial class. Although Augustus had resigned as consul, he desired to retain his consular not just in his provinces but throughout the empire. This desire, as well as the Marcus Primus affair, led to a second compromise between him and the Senate known as the second settlement.
The primary reasons for the second settlement were as follows. First, after Augustus relinquished the annual consulship, he was no longer in an official position to rule the state, yet his dominant position remained unchanged over his Roman, 'imperial' provinces where he was still a proconsul. When he annually held the office of consul, he had the power to intervene with the affairs of the other provincial proconsuls appointed by the Senate throughout the empire, when he deemed necessary.
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A second problem later arose showing the need for the second settlement in what became known as the "Marcus Primus affair". In late 24 or early 23 BC, charges were brought against Marcus Primus, the former proconsul (governor) of Macedonia, for waging a war without prior approval of the Senate on the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace, whose king was a Roman ally. He was defended by Lucius Licinius Varro Murena who told the trial that his client had received specific instructions from Augustus ordering him to attack the client state. Later, Primus testified that the orders came from the recently deceased Marcellus. Such orders, had they been given, would have been considered a breach of the Senate's prerogative under the constitutional settlement of 27 BC and its aftermath—i.e., before Augustus was granted —as Macedonia was a senatorial province under the Senate's jurisdiction, not an imperial province under the authority of Augustus. Such an action would have ripped away the veneer of republican restoration as promoted by Augustus, and exposed his fraud of merely being the first citizen, a first among equals. Even worse, the involvement of Marcellus provided some measure of proof that Augustus's policy was to have the youth take his place as princeps, instituting a form of monarchy—accusations that had already played out.
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The situation was so serious that Augustus appeared at the trial even though he had not been called as a witness. Under oath, Augustus declared that he gave no such order. Murena disbelieved Augustus's testimony and resented his attempt to subvert the trial by using his . He rudely demanded to know why Augustus had turned up to a trial to which he had not been called; Augustus replied that he came in the public interest. Although Primus was found guilty, some jurors voted to acquit, meaning that not everybody believed Augustus's testimony, an insult to the 'August One'.
The second settlement was completed in part to allay confusion and formalize Augustus's legal authority to intervene in senatorial provinces. The Senate granted Augustus a form of general , or proconsular imperium (power) that applied throughout the empire, not solely to his provinces. Moreover, the Senate augmented Augustus's proconsular imperium into , or proconsular imperium applicable throughout the empire that was more (maius) or greater than that held by the other proconsuls. This in effect gave Augustus constitutional power superior to all other proconsuls in the empire. Augustus stayed in Rome during the renewal process and provided veterans with lavish donations to gain their support, thereby ensuring that his status of proconsular imperium maius was renewed in 13 BC.
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Additional powers.
During the second settlement, Augustus was also granted the power of a tribune () for life, though not the official title of tribune. For some years, Augustus had been awarded , the immunity given to a tribune of the plebs. Now he decided to assume the full powers of the magistracy, renewed annually, in perpetuity. Legally, it was closed to patricians, a status that Augustus had acquired some years earlier when adopted by Julius Caesar. This power allowed him to convene the Senate and people at will and lay business before them, to veto the actions of either the Assembly or the Senate, to preside over elections, and to speak first at any meeting. Also included in Augustus's tribunician authority were powers usually reserved for the Roman censor; these included the right to supervise public morals and scrutinize laws to ensure that they were in the public interest, as well as the ability to hold a census and determine the membership of the Senate.
With the powers of a censor, Augustus appealed to virtues of Roman patriotism by banning all attire but the classic toga while entering the Forum. There was no precedent within the Roman system for combining the powers of the tribune and the censor into a single position, nor was Augustus ever elected to the office of censor. Julius Caesar had been granted similar powers, wherein he was charged with supervising the morals of the state. However, this position did not extend to the censor's ability to hold a census and determine the Senate's roster. The office of the began to lose its prestige due to Augustus's amassing of tribunal powers, so he revived its importance by making it a mandatory appointment for any plebeian desiring the praetorship.
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Augustus was granted sole within the city of Rome in addition to being granted proconsular and tribunician authority for life. Traditionally, proconsuls (Roman province governors) lost their proconsular when they crossed the Pomerium—the sacred boundary of Rome—and entered the city. In these situations, Augustus would have power as part of his tribunician authority, but his constitutional imperium within the Pomerium would be less than that of a serving consul, which meant that when he was in the city he might not be the constitutional magistrate with the most authority. Thanks to his prestige or , his wishes would usually be obeyed, but there might be some difficulty. To fill this power vacuum, the Senate voted that Augustus's (superior proconsular power) should not lapse when he was inside the city walls. All armed forces in the city had formerly been under the control of the urban praetors and consuls, but this situation now placed them under the sole authority of Augustus.
In addition, the credit was given to Augustus for each subsequent Roman military victory after this time, because the majority of Rome's armies were stationed in imperial provinces commanded by Augustus through the legatus who were deputies of the princeps in the provinces. Moreover, if a battle was fought in a senatorial province, Augustus's proconsular allowed him to take command of (or credit for) any major military victory. This meant that Augustus was the only individual able to receive a triumph, a tradition that began with Romulus, Rome's first king and first triumphant general. Tiberius, Augustus's eldest stepson by Livia, was the only other general to receive a triumph—for victories in Germania in 7 BC.
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Normally during republican times, the powers Augustus held even after the second settlement would have been split between several people, who would each exercise them with the assistance of a colleague and for a specific period of time. Augustus held them all at once by himself and with no time limits; even those that nominally had time limits were automatically renewed whenever they lapsed.
Conspiracy.
Many of the political subtleties of the second settlement seem to have evaded the comprehension of the plebeian class, who were Augustus's greatest supporters and clientele. This caused them to insist upon Augustus's participation in imperial affairs from time to time. Augustus failed to stand for election as consul in 22 BC, and fears arose once again that he was being forced from power by the aristocratic Senate. In 22, 21, and 19 BC, the people rioted in response and only allowed a single consul to be elected for each of those years, ostensibly to leave the other position open for Augustus.
Likewise, there was a food shortage in Rome in 22 BC which sparked panic, while many urban plebs called for Augustus to take on dictatorial powers to personally oversee the crisis. After a theatrical display of refusal before the Senate, Augustus finally accepted authority over Rome's grain supply "by virtue of his proconsular ", and ended the crisis almost immediately. It was not until AD 8 that a food crisis of this sort prompted Augustus to establish a , a permanent prefect who was in charge of procuring food supplies for Rome.
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There were some who were concerned by the expansion of powers granted to Augustus by the second settlement, and this came to a head with the apparent conspiracy of Fannius Caepio. Some time prior to 1 September 22 BC, a certain Castricius provided Augustus with information about a conspiracy led by Fannius Caepio. Murena, the outspoken consul who defended Primus in the Marcus Primus affair, was named among the conspirators. The conspirators were tried in absentia with Tiberius acting as prosecutor; the jury found them guilty, but it was not a unanimous verdict. All the accused were sentenced to death for treason and executed as soon as they were captured—without ever giving testimony in their defence. Augustus ensured that the façade of Republican government continued with an effective cover-up of the events.
In 19 BC, the Senate granted Augustus a form of "general consular imperium", which was probably , like the proconsular powers that he received in 23 BC. Like his tribune authority, the consular powers were another instance of gaining power from offices that he did not actually hold. In addition, Augustus was allowed to wear the consul's insignia in public and before the Senate, as well as to sit in the symbolic chair between the two consuls and hold the fasces, an emblem of consular authority. This seems to have assuaged the populace; regardless of whether or not Augustus was a consul, the importance was that he both appeared as one before the people and could exercise consular power if necessary. On 6 March 12 BC, after the death of Lepidus, he additionally took up the position of , the high priest of the college of the pontiffs, the most important position in Roman religion. On 5 February 2 BC, Augustus was also given the title 'father of the country'.
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Stability and staying power.
A final reason for the second settlement was to give the principate constitutional stability and staying power in case something happened to Princeps Augustus. His illness of early 23 BC and the Caepio conspiracy showed that the regime's existence hung by the thin thread of the life of one man, Augustus himself, who had several severe and dangerous illnesses throughout his life. If he were to die from natural causes or fall victim to assassination, Rome could be subjected to another round of civil war. The memories of Pharsalus, the Ides of March, the proscriptions, Philippi, and Actium, barely twenty-five years distant, were still vivid in the minds of many citizens. Proconsular imperium was conferred upon Agrippa for five years, similar to Augustus's power, in order to accomplish this constitutional stability. The exact nature of the grant is uncertain but it probably covered Augustus's imperial provinces, east and west, perhaps lacking authority over the provinces of the Senate. That came later, as did the jealously guarded tribunicia potestas. Augustus's accumulation of powers was now complete.
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War and expansion.
By AD 13, Augustus boasted 21 occasions where his troops proclaimed him after a successful battle. Almost the entire fourth chapter in his publicly released memoirs of achievements known as the is devoted to his military victories and honours.
Augustus also promoted the ideal of a superior Roman civilisation with a task of ruling the world (to the extent to which the Romans knew it), a sentiment embodied in words that the contemporary poet Virgil attributes to a legendary ancestor of Augustus: —"Roman, remember to rule the Earth's peoples with authority!" The impulse for expansionism was apparently prominent among all classes at Rome, and it is accorded divine sanction by Virgil's Jupiter in Book 1 of the "Aeneid", where Jupiter promises Rome 'sovereignty without end'.
By the end of his reign, the armies of Augustus had conquered northern Hispania (modern Spain and Portugal) and the Alpine regions of Raetia and Noricum (modern Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, Slovenia), Illyricum and Pannonia (modern Albania, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, etc.), and had extended the borders of Africa Proconsularis to the east and south. Judea was added to the province of Syria when Augustus deposed Herod Archelaus, successor to client king Herod the Great. Syria (like Egypt after Antony) was governed by a high prefect of the equestrian class rather than by a proconsul or legate of Augustus.
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Again, no military effort was needed in 25 BC when Galatia (part of modern Turkey) was converted to a Roman province shortly after Amyntas of Galatia was killed by an avenging widow of a slain prince from Homonada. The rebellious tribes of Asturias and Cantabria in modern-day Spain were finally quelled in 19 BC, and the territory fell under the provinces of Hispania and Lusitania. This region proved to be a major asset in funding Augustus's future military campaigns, as it was rich in mineral deposits that could be fostered in Roman mining projects, especially the very rich gold deposits at Las Médulas.
Conquering the peoples of the Alps in 16 BC was another important victory for Rome, since it provided a large territorial buffer between the Roman citizens of Italy and Rome's enemies in Germania to the north. Horace dedicated an ode to the victory, while the monumental Trophy of Augustus near Monaco was built to honour the occasion. The capture of the Alpine region also served the next offensive in 12 BC, when Tiberius began the offensive against the Pannonian tribes of Illyricum, and his brother Nero Claudius Drusus moved against the Germanic tribes of the eastern Rhineland. Both campaigns were successful, as Drusus's forces reached the Elbe River by 9 BC—though he died shortly after by falling off his horse. It was recorded that the pious Tiberius walked in front of his brother's body all the way back to Rome.
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To protect Rome's eastern territories from the Parthian Empire, Augustus relied on the client states of the east to act as territorial buffers and areas that could raise their own troops for defense. To ensure security of the empire's eastern flank, Augustus stationed a Roman army in Syria, while his skilled stepson Tiberius negotiated with the Parthians as Rome's diplomat to the East. Tiberius was responsible for restoring Tigranes V to the throne of the Kingdom of Armenia.
Arguably his greatest diplomatic achievement was negotiating with Phraates IV of Parthia (37–2 BC) in 20 BC for the return of the battle standards lost by Crassus in the Battle of Carrhae, a symbolic victory and great boost of morale for Rome. Werner Eck claims that this was a great disappointment for Romans seeking to avenge Crassus's defeat by military means. However, Maria Brosius explains that Augustus used the return of the standards as propaganda symbolizing the submission of Parthia to Rome. The event was celebrated in art such as the breastplate design on the statue Augustus of Prima Porta and in monuments such as the Temple of Mars Ultor ('Mars the Avenger') built to house the standards. Parthia had always posed a threat to Rome in the east, but the real battlefront was along the Rhine and Danube rivers. Before the final fight with Antony, Octavian's campaigns against the tribes in Dalmatia were the first step in expanding Roman dominions to the Danube. Victory in battle was not always a permanent success, as newly conquered territories were constantly retaken by Rome's enemies in Germania.
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A prime example of Roman loss in battle was the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, where three entire legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed by Arminius, leader of the Cherusci, an apparent Roman ally. Augustus retaliated by dispatching Tiberius and Drusus to the Rhineland to pacify it, which had some success although the battle brought the end to Roman expansion into Germany. The Roman general Germanicus took advantage of a Cherusci civil war between Arminius and Segestes; at the Battle of Idistaviso in AD 16, he defeated Arminius.
Death and succession.
The illness of Augustus in 23 BC brought the problem of succession to the forefront of political issues and the public. To ensure stability, he needed to designate an heir to his unique position in Roman society and government. This was to be achieved in small, undramatic and incremental ways that did not stir senatorial fears of monarchy. If someone was to succeed to Augustus's unofficial position of power, he would have to earn it through his own publicly proven merits.
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Some Augustan historians argue that indications pointed toward his sister's son Marcellus, who had been quickly married to Augustus's daughter Julia the Elder. Other historians dispute this since Augustus's will was read aloud to the Senate while he was seriously ill in 23 BC, indicating a preference for Marcus Agrippa, who was Augustus's second in charge and arguably the only one of his associates who could have controlled the legions and held the empire together.
After the death of Marcellus in 23 BC, Augustus married his daughter to Agrippa. This union produced five children, three sons and two daughters: Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Vipsania Julia, Agrippina, and Agrippa Postumus, so named because he was born after Marcus Agrippa died. Shortly after the second settlement, Agrippa was granted a five-year term of administering the eastern half of the empire with the of a proconsul and the same granted to Augustus (although not trumping Augustus's authority), his seat of governance stationed at Samos in the eastern Aegean. This granting of power showed Augustus's favor for Agrippa, but it was also a measure to please members of his Caesarian party by allowing one of their members to share a considerable amount of power with him.
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Augustus's intent became apparent to make his grandsons Gaius and Lucius his heirs when he adopted them as his own children. He took the consulship in 5 and 2 BC so that he could personally usher them into their political careers, and they were nominated for the consulships of AD 1 and 4. Augustus also showed favour to his stepsons, Livia's children from her first marriage, Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus (henceforth referred to as Drusus) and Tiberius Claudius (henceforth Tiberius), granting them military commands and public office, though seeming to favour Drusus. After Agrippa died in 12 BC, Tiberius was ordered to divorce his own wife, Vipsania Agrippina, and marry Augustus's widowed daughter, Julia, as soon as a period of mourning for Agrippa had ended. Drusus's marriage to Augustus's niece Antonia was considered an unbreakable affair, whereas Vipsania was "only" the daughter of the late Agrippa from his first marriage.
Tiberius shared in Augustus's tribune powers as of 6 BC but shortly thereafter went into retirement, reportedly wanting no further role in politics while he exiled himself to Rhodes. No specific reason is known for his departure, though it could have been a combination of reasons, including a failing marriage with Julia as well as a sense of envy and exclusion over Augustus's apparent favouring of the younger Gaius and Lucius. (Gaius and Lucius joined the college of priests at an early age, were presented to spectators in a more favourable light, and were introduced to the army in Gaul.)
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After the deaths of both Lucius and Gaius in AD 2 and 4 respectively, and the earlier death of his brother Drusus (9 BC), Tiberius was recalled to Rome in June AD 4, where he was adopted by Augustus on the condition that he, in turn, adopt his nephew Germanicus. This continued the tradition of presenting at least two generations of heirs. In that year, Tiberius was also granted the powers of a tribune and proconsul, emissaries from foreign kings had to pay their respects to him and by AD 13 was awarded with his second triumph and equal level of with that of Augustus.
The only other possible claimant as heir was Agrippa Postumus, who had been exiled by Augustus in AD 7, his banishment made permanent by senatorial decree, and Augustus officially disowned him. He certainly fell out of Augustus's favour as an heir; the historian Erich S. Gruen notes various contemporary sources that state Agrippa Postumus was a "vulgar young man, brutal and brutish, and of depraved character".
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Augustus's famous last words were, "Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit" ()—referring to the play-acting and regal authority that he had put on as emperor. An enormous funerary procession of mourners travelled with Augustus's body from Nola to Rome, and all public and private businesses closed on the day of his burial. Tiberius and his son Drusus delivered the eulogy while standing atop two . Augustus's body was coffin-bound and cremated on a pyre close to his mausoleum. It was proclaimed that Augustus joined the company of the gods as a member of the Roman pantheon.
Historian D. C. A. Shotter states that Augustus's policy of favoring the Julian family line over the Claudian might have afforded Tiberius sufficient cause to show open disdain for Augustus after the latter's death; instead, Tiberius was always quick to rebuke those who criticized Augustus. Shotter suggests that Augustus's deification obliged Tiberius to suppress any open resentment that he might have harbored, coupled with Tiberius's "extremely conservative" attitude towards religion. Also, historian R. Shaw-Smith points to letters of Augustus to Tiberius which display affection towards Tiberius and high regard for his military merits. Shotter states that Tiberius focused his anger and criticism on Gaius Asinius Gallus (for marrying Vipsania after Augustus forced Tiberius to divorce her), as well as toward the two young Caesars, Gaius and Lucius—instead of Augustus, the real architect of his divorce and imperial demotion.
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Legacy.
Augustus created a regime which maintained peace and prosperity in the Roman west and the Greek east for two centuries. Its dominance also laid the foundations of a concept of universal empire in the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empires down to their dissolutions in 1453 and 1806, respectively. Both his adoptive surname, Caesar, and his title became the permanent titles of the rulers of the Roman Empire for fourteen centuries after his death, in use both at Old Rome and at New Rome. In many languages, became the word for "emperor", as in the German and in the Bulgarian and subsequently Russian (sometimes or ). The cult of continued until the state religion of the empire was changed to Christianity in 391 by Theodosius I. Consequently, there are many statues and busts of the first emperor. He had composed an account of his achievements, the "", to be inscribed in bronze in front of his mausoleum. Copies of the text were inscribed throughout the empire upon his death. The inscriptions in Latin featured translations in Greek beside it and were inscribed on many public edifices, such as the temple in Ankara dubbed the , called the "queen of inscriptions" by historian Theodor Mommsen.
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The "" is the only work to have survived from antiquity, though Augustus is also known to have composed poems entitled , , and , an autobiography of 13 books, a philosophical treatise, and a written rebuttal to Brutus's "Eulogy of Cato". Historians are able to analyze excerpts of letters penned by Augustus, preserved in other works, to others for additional facts or clues about his personal life.
Many consider Augustus to be Rome's greatest emperor; his policies certainly extended the empire's life span and initiated the celebrated or . The Roman Senate wished subsequent emperors to "be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan". Augustus was intelligent, decisive, and a shrewd politician, but he was not perhaps as charismatic as Julius Caesar and was influenced on occasion by Livia (sometimes for the worse). Nevertheless, his legacy proved more enduring. The city of Rome was utterly transformed under Augustus, with Rome's first institutionalized police force, firefighting force, and the establishment of the municipal prefect as a permanent office. The police force was divided into cohorts of 500 men each, while the units of firemen ranged from 500 to 1,000 men each, with 7 units assigned to 14 divided city sectors.
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A 'prefect of the watch' was put in charge of the vigiles, Rome's fire brigade and police. With Rome's civil wars at an end, Augustus was also able to create a standing army for the Roman Empire, fixed at a size of 28 legions of about 170,000 soldiers. This was supported by numerous auxiliary units of 500 non-citizen soldiers each, often recruited from recently conquered areas.
With his finances securing the maintenance of roads throughout Italy, Augustus installed an official courier system of relay stations overseen by a military officer known as the . Besides the advent of swifter communication among Italian polities, his extensive building of roads throughout Italy also allowed Rome's armies to march swiftly and at an unprecedented pace across the country. In the year 6 Augustus established the , donating 170 million sesterces to the new military treasury that provided for both active and retired soldiers.
One of the most enduring institutions of Augustus was the establishment of the Praetorian Guard in 27 BC, originally a personal bodyguard unit on the battlefield that evolved into an imperial guard as well as an important political force in Rome. They had the power to intimidate the Senate, install new emperors, and depose ones they disliked; the last emperor they served was Maxentius, as it was Constantine I who disbanded them in the early 4th century and destroyed their barracks, the Castra Praetoria.
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Although the most powerful individual in the Roman Empire, Augustus wished to embody the spirit of Republican virtue and norms. He also wanted to relate to and connect with the concerns of the plebs and lay people. He achieved this through various means of generosity and a cutting back of lavish excess. In the year 29 BC, Augustus gave 400 sesterces (equal to one-tenth of a Roman pound of gold) each to 250,000 citizens, 1,000 sesterces each to 120,000 veterans in the colonies, and spent 700 million sesterces in purchasing land for his soldiers to settle upon. He also restored 82 different temples to display his care for the Roman pantheon of deities. In 28 BC, he melted down 80 silver statues erected in his likeness and in honour of him, an attempt of his to appear frugal and modest.
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However, for his rule of Rome and establishing the principate, Augustus has also been subjected to criticism throughout the ages. The contemporary Roman jurist Marcus Antistius Labeo, fond of the days of pre-Augustan republican liberty in which he had been born, openly criticised the Augustan regime. In the beginning of his "Annals", Tacitus wrote that Augustus had cunningly subverted Republican Rome into a position of slavery. He continued to say that, with Augustus's death and swearing of loyalty to Tiberius, the people of Rome traded one slaveholder for another. In a 2006 biography on Augustus, Anthony Everitt asserts that through the centuries, judgments on Augustus's reign have oscillated between these two extremes.
Tacitus was of the belief that Nerva (r. 96–98) successfully "mingled two formerly alien ideas, principate and liberty". The 3rd-century historian Cassius Dio acknowledged Augustus as a benign, moderate ruler, yet like most other historians after the death of Augustus, Dio viewed Augustus as an autocrat. The poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (AD 39–65) was of the opinion that Caesar's victory over Pompey and the fall of Cato the Younger (95–46 BC) marked the end of traditional liberty in Rome; historian Chester Starr writes of his avoidance of criticizing Augustus, "perhaps Augustus was too sacred a figure to accuse directly."
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The Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), in his "Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome", criticised Augustus for installing tyranny over Rome, and likened what he believed Great Britain's virtuous constitutional monarchy to Rome's moral Republic of the 2nd century BC. In his criticism of Augustus, the admiral and historian Thomas Gordon (1658–1741) compared Augustus to the puritanical tyrant Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658). Thomas Gordon and the French political philosopher Montesquieu (1689–1755) both remarked that Augustus was a coward in battle. In his "Memoirs of the Court of Augustus", the Scottish scholar Thomas Blackwell (1701–1757) deemed Augustus a Machiavellian ruler, "a bloodthirsty vindicative usurper", "wicked and worthless", "a mean spirit", and a "tyrant".
Revenue reforms.
Augustus's public revenue reforms had a great impact on the subsequent success of the Empire. Augustus brought a far greater portion of the Empire's expanded land base under consistent, direct taxation from Rome, instead of exacting varying, intermittent, and somewhat arbitrary tributes from each local province as Augustus's predecessors had done. This reform greatly increased Rome's net revenue from its territorial acquisitions, stabilized its flow, and regularized the financial relationship between Rome and the provinces, rather than provoking fresh resentments with each new arbitrary exaction of tribute.
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The measures of taxation in the reign of Augustus were determined by population census, with fixed quotas for each province. Citizens of Rome and Italy paid indirect taxes, while direct taxes were exacted from the provinces. Indirect taxes included a 4% tax on the price of slaves, a 1% tax on goods sold at auction, and a 5% tax on the inheritance of estates valued at over 100,000 sesterces by persons other than the next of kin.
An equally important reform was the abolition of private tax farming, which was replaced by salaried civil service tax collectors. Private contractors who collected taxes for the State were the norm in the Republican era. Some of them were powerful enough to influence the number of votes for men running for offices in Rome. These tax farmers called publicans were infamous for their depredations, great private wealth, and the right to tax local areas.
The use of Egypt's immense land rents to finance the Empire's operations resulted from Augustus's conquest of Egypt and the shift to a Roman form of government. As it was effectively considered Augustus's private property rather than a province of the Empire, it became part of each succeeding emperor's patrimonium.
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