Pax Romana
As Pax Romana ("Roman Peace") or Pax Augusta ( Latin for "Peace of Augustus ") is a period of about 200-250 years of the Roman Empire , which despite individual uprisings and brief civil wars was characterized by internal peace and stability . The emperors ( Augusti ) acted as guarantors of inner peace . This phase began in 27 BC. With the end of the Roman civil wars and the res publica libera under the first Roman emperor Augustus , who established a de facto sole rule ( principate ), and ended either in 192 AD with the death of Emperor Commodus or in 235 AD with the end of the Severan dynasty (see also optimum of Roman times ).
The catchphrase Pax Romana or, more often, Pax Augusta , always meant primarily inner peace, i.e. the absence of civil war. Compared to the previous century, when the Roman Republic had perished in long civil wars, while in the east the former order of the Hellenistic world collapsed, and in contrast to the rule of many later emperors, the early principate actually brought Rome, Italy and most of the provinces a long one Time of inner peace, stability, security and prosperity. After the ravages of the civil wars, the economy flourished, as did art and culture. The time produced poets like Virgil , Horace , Ovid and Properz , historians like Titus Livius and architects like Vitruvius .
As Augustus believed, Rome changed from a city made of bricks to a city made of marble. Impressive architectural evidence of this period has survived to this day, such as the Marcellus Theater , the Pantheon built by Agrippa and renovated under Emperor Hadrian and, not least, Augustus' mausoleum and the Ara Pacis , the altar of peace from 9 BC. BC, which shows a procession of the imperial family on a relief and is supposed to celebrate the prosperity of the pacified empire.
However, since the year 16 BC at the latest, there was a contrast to inner peace. The series of wars that were waged on the borders. The empire expanded under Augustus at a rate like never before and never since. Besides the rich Egypt and Galatia provinces were added on the Rhine and Danube him whose conquest only with the Gaul by Julius Caesar was comparable. War against external enemies was not seen as a contradiction to the Pax Augusta . Therefore, Augustus, under whom the empire waged very extensive wars of conquest, could still be celebrated as Emperor of Peace.
Because war was in the interior of the empire and the provinces after the year 31 BC. Chr. Can only be felt a little. Even contemporaries saw peace and prosperity as defining characteristics of the era. This was why they resigned themselves to the introduction of the monarchy and the end of the republic: the loss of freedom was the price to pay for pacifying the empire. Conversely, this meant that the legitimacy of the imperial rule largely depended on the Augusti actually keeping the promise to ensure peace and security in the empire.
The state was stabilized: the empire continued to find itself exposed to external opponents at its borders, such as the Teutons on the Rhine and Danube and the Parthians in the east, and emperors like Trajan waged offensive wars of conquest; in the pacified interior, however, the cultural and economic life flourished, with the population largely isolated from external dangers. Many cities no longer had walls. Only after the death of Marcus Aurelius and then increasingly during the time of the imperial crisis of the third century , groups of plundering enemies repeatedly broke into the empire, while at the same time internal stability dwindled and civil war broke out again and again. In late antiquity stabilization was only partially achieved before the western empire collapsed in the 5th century after endless internal and external wars.
The Pax Augusta was propagated on coins as the foundation of imperial legitimacy until late Roman times. The goddess Pax is often shown on the reverse side of coins with the abbreviation PAX AVG. As far as the abbreviation PAX AUGG is found, it is intended to indicate the peace guaranteed by two emperors ruling at the same time. The abbreviation PAX AVGG ET CAESS means the two senior emperors and their Caesars as junior emperors at the time of the Tetrarchy . The abbreviation AVGGGG for the four tetrarchs is also rarely found.
See also
literature
- Dilyana Boteva, Lucretiu Mihailescu-Bîrliba, Octavian Bounegru (Eds.): Pax Romana. Cultural exchange and economic relations in the Danube provinces of the Roman Empire . Parthenon Verlag, Kaiserslautern 2012, ISBN 978-3-942994-01-9 .
- Klaus Bringmann : War and Peace. Pax Augusta and Roman claim to world domination. In: LWL-Römermuseum Haltern am See (Ed.): Imperium. 2000 years of the Varus Battle. Theiss, Stuttgart 2009, p. 80 ff.
- Hannah Cornwell: Pax and the Politics of Peace. Republic to Principate . OUP, Oxford 2017.
- Lawrence Waddy: Pax romana and world peace . Norton, New York 1950.
- Klaus Wengst : Pax Romana, aspiration and reality. Experiences and perceptions of peace with Jesus and in early Christianity . Kaiser, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-459-01638-8 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dietmar Kienast : Augustus: Prinzeps and Monarch. 5th edition. Verlag Philipp von Zabern in Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Mainz 2014, ISBN 3-8053-4844-4 , p. 78 f.