What is the provincia?

A 10-year command over the major frontier provinces: Spain, Gaul, Syria, and Egypt. These provinces contained the bulk of the Roman legions (around 20 of 28 legions). The senate retained the unarmed provinces (Africa, Asia, Macedonia, etc.), reinforcing the impression that the "dangerous" work of defending Rome, not the exercise of naked power, justified his command.

What is the title Augustus?

"Revered One," a religious title suggesting divine sanction without claiming divinity, voted on 16 January 27 BC. The name was new: no Roman had been called Augustus before. The poet Ennius had used it in a religious sense ("augusta templa").

What are recognition of auctoritas?

Augustus's accumulated personal prestige was formally recognised. Auctoritas (the moral authority that allowed a senior figure's recommendations to be followed without formal compulsion) was a Republican concept; it now became the rhetorical foundation of the principate. Res Gestae 34 states this claim in his own words: "auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt" ("in authority I excelled all, but of power I held no more than those who were my colleagues in each magistracy").

What is the clipeus virtutis and the corona civica?

A golden shield (clipeus virtutis) was placed in the Curia Julia listing Augustus's virtues: virtus (courage), clementia (mercy), iustitia (justice), and pietas (piety toward the gods, ancestors, and country). A civic crown (corona civica) of oak leaves, traditionally awarded for saving a citizen's life, was fixed above the door of his house on the Palatine, publicly casting him as the saviour of the entire citizen body.

What is cura annonae?

Responsibility for the grain supply of Rome.

Responsibility for public morals (a moral censorship).

What is pontifex Maximus?

Chief priest of the Roman state, on the death of Lepidus.

What is pater Patriae?

"Father of the country," a high-prestige honorific.

§-Syllabus dot point

NSWAncient HistorySyllabus dot point

What was the Augustan Settlement and how did it establish the principate?

The First Settlement (27 BC) and the Second Settlement (23 BC), the constitutional powers granted to Octavian (now Augustus), the political theory of the principate, and the verdicts of Syme, Goldsworthy, and Eck

A focused answer to the HSC Ancient History dot point on the Augustan Settlement. The First Settlement of 27 BC (the title Augustus, the provincia), the Second Settlement of 23 BC (tribunicia potestas, maius imperium proconsulare), and the political theory of the disguised monarchy, with the verdicts of Syme, Eck, and Goldsworthy.

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Quick answer

The Augustan Settlement consisted of the First Settlement (13-16 January 27 BC, granting Augustus the title Augustus, a 10-year provincia including the legionary provinces, the clipeus virtutis and corona civica, and recognition of his auctoritas, framed as res publica restituta, "the Republic restored") and the Second Settlement (23 BC, prompted by Augustus's illness and the Caepio-Murena affair, granting him tribunicia potestas annually for life and maius imperium proconsulare in exchange for surrendering the continuous consulship), a constitutional framework that Syme reads as a disguised monarchy ("a screen and a sham"), Eck as a genuinely novel third political form (the principate) resting on real consensus that Galinsky also stresses, and Goldsworthy as the legal channel for an underlying military and personal power.

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How to read a source on this topic

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to describe in detail the two Augustan Settlements (27 BC and 23 BC), the specific constitutional powers granted, the political theory of "restoring the Republic" while in reality establishing a monarchy, and the modern historiographical debate centred on Syme.

In plain English

Imagine the most powerful person in the company has just won a boardroom takeover battle and everyone knows it, but openly announcing "I'm now in charge of everything" would spook the shareholders and the other directors who fought a civil war partly to stop exactly that. So instead, in a carefully rehearsed board meeting, he stands up and "resigns" all his emergency powers back to the board. The board, playing its scripted part, immediately begs him to keep running the most important divisions (the ones with the security guards, i.e. the legions) for another ten years, gives him a fancy new honorific, and puts a plaque on the wall praising his virtues. Nobody is fooled about who actually runs the company, but everyone can now say the old rules are still in place.

Six years later he gets sick, a senior manager tries to force him out early, and he realises this arrangement is too shaky and too tied to one job title. So he resigns his official position entirely and instead gets a permanent, renewable "special authority" that lets him override any manager anywhere in the company, no job title required. That second deal, not the first, is the one that actually locks in his control for good.

The answer

Why the settlements were needed

By 30 BC Octavian had won the civil wars and held unprecedented power. He had:

The legions and the army's loyalty
The wealth of Egypt as his personal province
A network of personal allies (Agrippa, Maecenas)
The accumulated propaganda of a victorious general

But raw military rule was politically unsustainable in Rome. The civil wars had been fought, on both sides, in the name of restoring the Republic. Some constitutional framework was required to channel Octavian's power without provoking the senatorial reaction that had killed Caesar in 44 BC.

The First Settlement (13-16 January 27 BC)

In the senate on 13 January 27 BC, Octavian staged a carefully theatrical speech announcing the "return" of his extraordinary powers to the senate and Roman people, the moment Res Gestae 34 later calls res publica restituta ("the Republic restored"). The senate responded, in a scripted exchange, by pleading with him to retain control of the state; three days later, on 16 January, the arrangement was formalised. Together these days make up the First Settlement.

The senate granted him:

The provincia: A 10-year command over the major frontier provinces: Spain, Gaul, Syria, and Egypt. These provinces contained the bulk of the Roman legions (around 20 of 28 legions). The senate retained the unarmed provinces (Africa, Asia, Macedonia, etc.), reinforcing the impression that the "dangerous" work of defending Rome, not the exercise of naked power, justified his command.
The title Augustus: "Revered One," a religious title suggesting divine sanction without claiming divinity, voted on 16 January 27 BC. The name was new: no Roman had been called Augustus before. The poet Ennius had used it in a religious sense ("augusta templa"). The title carried connotations of authority (auctoritas) and proper religious observance, and quietly displaced the name Octavian from official use.
Recognition of auctoritas: Augustus's accumulated personal prestige was formally recognised. Auctoritas (the moral authority that allowed a senior figure's recommendations to be followed without formal compulsion) was a Republican concept; it now became the rhetorical foundation of the principate. Res Gestae 34 states this claim in his own words: "auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt" ("in authority I excelled all, but of power I held no more than those who were my colleagues in each magistracy").
The clipeus virtutis and the corona civica: A golden shield (clipeus virtutis) was placed in the Curia Julia listing Augustus's virtues: virtus (courage), clementia (mercy), iustitia (justice), and pietas (piety toward the gods, ancestors, and country). A civic crown (corona civica) of oak leaves, traditionally awarded for saving a citizen's life, was fixed above the door of his house on the Palatine, publicly casting him as the saviour of the entire citizen body.

The First Settlement was framed as the "restoration of the Republic." Augustus continued to hold the consulship annually, a fact that would soon cause friction.

The crisis of 23 BC

In 23 BC Augustus faced a compounding political crisis. He became seriously ill, reportedly cured by his doctor Antonius Musa's unconventional cold-water treatment, and, believing he might die, handed his signet ring to Agrippa rather than to a designated political heir, exposing the regime's lack of any accepted succession mechanism.

At around the same time a conspiracy was uncovered involving the consul Fannius Caepio and, in most ancient accounts, Aulus Terentius Varro Murena; both were tried in absentia and executed. This is usually called the Caepio-Murena affair. The precise year of the trial, whether Caepio and Murena were the same person under different names or two separate conspirators, and how it relates to the timing of the Second Settlement are all genuinely debated among modern historians, since Cassius Dio, Suetonius and Velleius Paterculus do not fully agree; flag this uncertainty rather than asserting a single confident narrative.

After the crisis, Augustus reorganised his constitutional position. The First Settlement had relied on his continuous consulship, which monopolised one of the two consulships annually and frustrated senators looking for the office, an obvious factor behind Murena's disaffection. The Second Settlement addressed this.

The Second Settlement (23 BC)

Augustus gave up the continuous consulship. In exchange he received two new powers:

Maius imperium proconsulare. Greater proconsular power. This allowed Augustus to override governors anywhere in the empire, even in senatorial provinces. The power was renewed at intervals.

Tribunicia potestas annually for life. The powers of the plebeian tribune without the office: sacrosanctity (legal protection of his person), the veto (intercessio) over any magistrate, the right to convene the senate and the popular assemblies, and the right to introduce legislation. The tribunician power was renewed annually and counted as a regnal year for dating purposes.

The Second Settlement gave Augustus the constitutional tools to govern the entire empire from outside the consulship. Other senators could hold the consulship without competing with him.

Subsequent powers

The settlements established the framework but Augustus continued to acquire additional powers over time.

Cura annonae (22 BC): Responsibility for the grain supply of Rome.
Cura morum (18 BC and 11 BC): Responsibility for public morals (a moral censorship).
Pontifex Maximus (12 BC): Chief priest of the Roman state, on the death of Lepidus.
Pater Patriae (2 BC): "Father of the country," a high-prestige honorific.

The political theory

The settlements were a sophisticated political achievement. Augustus claimed (Res Gestae 34) that he had "transferred the state from his own power to the discretion of the senate and the Roman people."

In reality the powers were monarchical. Tacitus (Annals 1.1 to 4) records the cool verdict: Augustus "won over the soldiers with gifts, the populace with cheap food, and everyone with the seductions of peace; gradually he placed everything under his own control under the title princeps."

The princeps ("first citizen") was the term Augustus used for himself. It avoided the title rex (king) while claiming the substance of monarchical authority.

The Augustan Settlement at a glance

Element	Date	Significance
First Settlement	13-16 Jan 27 BC	Title Augustus; 10-year provincia
Title "Augustus"	16 Jan 27 BC	New title, religious connotations
Clipeus virtutis / corona civica	27 BC	Curia Julia shield of virtues; civic crown on his doorway
Crisis of 23 BC	23 BC	Illness; Caepio-Murena conspiracy (dating debated)
Second Settlement	23 BC	Tribunicia potestas; maius imperium proconsulare
Cura annonae	22-19 BC	Grain crisis; corn supply
Pontifex Maximus	12 BC	Chief priest, on Lepidus's death
Pater Patriae	2 BC	Father of the country

Historiography

Ronald Syme (The Roman Revolution, 1939) is the canonical sceptical reading. Writing on the eve of the Second World War and shaped by the collapse of European parliamentary systems into dictatorship, Syme argued the settlements were a constitutional facade for what was effectively a monarchy, famously calling the whole arrangement "a screen and a sham": the "restoration of the Republic" was propaganda, and the new regime rested on faction-fighting and military force rather than law.

Werner Eck (The Age of Augustus, 2003) pushes back on the cynicism of Syme's reading. He emphasises the constitutional novelty: the settlements, especially the Second, created a genuinely new political form, the principate, that was neither monarchy nor Republic but a durable third thing, one his successors inherited as working machinery rather than pure fiction.

Karl Galinsky (Augustan Culture, 1996) develops the institutional/consensual counter-argument further by stressing that auctoritas and the settlements' vocabulary were not merely imposed from above. Coinage, inscriptions and civic calendars across Italy and the provinces show the language of "restoration" being actively adopted by local elites, evidence, Galinsky argues, of real consensus rather than passive acceptance of a sham.

Adrian Goldsworthy (Augustus, 2014) sits between the two positions, integrating the political and military dimensions: the settlements were the constitutional channel for an underlying power that was, in the end, military and personal, so Syme's scepticism about the ultimate source of power is broadly right even if Eck is right that the legal form mattered.

How to read a source on this topic

Section IV sources on the settlements typically include extracts from Augustus's Res Gestae (especially chapter 34), Tacitus's Annals 1.1 to 4, Cassius Dio's Roman History 53, Suetonius's Divus Augustus, or modern reconstructions of the constitutional powers. Three reading habits.

First, distinguish what Augustus claims from what historians describe. Res Gestae claims the "restoration of the Republic." Tacitus and Dio describe a disguised monarchy. Both are sources, but for different things.

Second, watch the legal precision. Tribunicia potestas, maius imperium proconsulare, and provincia are specific constitutional terms. Use them precisely.

Third, integrate the settlements with the wider regime. Syme's argument is that the settlements were a facade. Even if you disagree, address the argument; do not just describe the legal forms.

Model exam responses

1. Source-analysis response (origin/usefulness/reliability). "Res Gestae 34, Augustus's own account, claims that after 27 BC he held 'no more power than my colleagues in each magistracy,' excelling only in auctoritas. The source's origin as a funerary inscription commissioned by Augustus himself, published only after his death in AD 14, makes it highly useful as direct evidence of how the regime wished to be remembered, and precisely dates the vocabulary of 'restoration' to the settlement itself. Its reliability as a factual constitutional record is limited, however, because it is deliberately self-justifying: it says nothing of the 10-year provincia's roughly 20 legions or of the theatre of the January 27 BC senate session. Corroborated against Tacitus's far more hostile Annals 1.2, the Res Gestae passage reveals intended image rather than settled fact."

Marker's note: the markers reward a clear origin/motive line, BALANCED usefulness and limitation, and corroboration against a second named source rather than mere translation of the Latin.

2. Essay paragraph (testing Syme against Eck). "Syme's verdict that the settlements were 'a screen and a sham' rightly exposes that the ultimate foundation of Augustus's power was the roughly 20 legions attached to his 27 BC provincia, not the senate's goodwill. Yet Eck's institutional reading better explains why the arrangement lasted four decades and outlived Augustus himself: the Second Settlement of 23 BC did not simply repeat the theatre of 27 BC but genuinely restructured power, detaching it from the consulship and vesting it instead in tribunicia potestas and maius imperium proconsulare, powers with real Republican precedent that Tiberius could inherit without needing to invent a new constitution. A regime built on pure sham could not have been handed on so smoothly."

Marker's note: this paragraph scores because it sustains a judgement (partial agreement with Syme, qualified by Eck), deploys precise named powers and dates, and integrates two historians as competing argument rather than a list.

Command words and using this dot point's sources

Watch the command word. "To what extent" / "assess" / "evaluate" on a Syme-style prompt demand a sustained JUDGEMENT, not a description of both settlements: state your verdict on Syme's claim in the introduction and test it in every paragraph, weaving Eck and Galinsky as counter-argument ("Syme calls it a screen and a sham, but Eck's institutional reading and Galinsky's evidence of consensus complicate this") rather than listing historians at the end.

For a source-analysis item, cover ORIGIN (who wrote/made it, and when relative to 27/23 BC), MOTIVE and AUDIENCE, then USEFULNESS and RELIABILITY separately (a source can be useful for one purpose and unreliable for another), then corroborate with own knowledge. Res Gestae is a first-person, self-justifying inscription; Tacitus and Dio are later, hostile or distanced narrative histories; treat each accordingly and never quote one as if it were neutral fact.

Outline/describe items want accurately sequenced content with dates (13-16 January 27 BC is not "27 BC" alone). Explain items want a causal chain (illness and the Caepio-Murena affair caused the Second Settlement). Always distinguish what Augustus CLAIMED (Res Gestae 34) from what he actually HELD (the powers themselves).

Common exam traps

Treating the settlements as one event: Two settlements, on 13-16 January 27 BC and in 23 BC. The Second is the more constitutionally important.
Forgetting tribunicia potestas: The most important single power of the Second Settlement, and the source of imperial regnal-year dating.
Missing the political theory: Syme's "screen and a sham" thesis (The Roman Revolution, 1939) is the canonical interpretive frame, but a top answer also tests it against Eck and Galinsky rather than only repeating it.
Calling Augustus an emperor in 27 BC: He was princeps, not imperator in the later sense of "emperor." The titulature evolved gradually across 27 BC, 23 BC, 12 BC (pontifex maximus) and 2 BC (pater patriae).
Asserting a single confident date for the Caepio-Murena conspiracy: The ancient sources disagree on details; state that the dating and cast of conspirators are debated rather than inventing false precision.

Exam-style practice questions

Practice questions written in the style of NESA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.

2022 HSC (verbatim)20 marksTo what extent were the settlements of 27 BC and 23 BC key to Augustus' power and authority?

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A 25-mark essay needs thesis, developed paragraphs, and historiography.

Thesis: The settlements were the constitutional framework of Augustan power but not its sole basis. Authority rested on settlements + army loyalty + Egyptian wealth + propaganda + auctoritas.
First Settlement (13 January 27 BC): Octavian "returned" extraordinary powers to senate. He received: 10-year provincia over Spain, Gaul, Syria, Egypt with most legions; the title Augustus; recognition of auctoritas. Framed as "restoration of the Republic."
Second Settlement (23 BC): After illness and the Murena conspiracy. Gave up continuous consulship; received maius imperium proconsulare (override governors) and tribunicia potestas annually for life (sacrosanctity, veto, right to convene senate). Constitutional foundation of the principate.
Political theory: Res Gestae 34 claims he transferred the state to the senate. Tacitus (Annals 1.1-4) calls him "who placed everything under his own control under the title princeps." Cassius Dio (53) details the constitutional manoeuvres.
Beyond settlements: Army loyalty (aerarium militare from AD 6), Egyptian wealth, patronage network (Agrippa, Maecenas), propaganda (Ara Pacis, Res Gestae), family alliances.
Syme: The Roman Revolution (1939): constitutional facade for monarchy.
Eck: The Age of Augustus (2003): novel third political form.
Goldsworthy: Augustus (2014): integrates political and military.
Conclusion: Settlements were key but not sufficient; the constitutional channel for power whose underlying reality was military, financial, and personal.

Markers reward both settlements, content, theory, historians, and judgement.

Practice (NESA)8 marksOutline the constitutional powers given to Augustus in the settlements of 27 BC and 23 BC.

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An 8-mark "outline" needs the formal powers of each settlement.

First Settlement (27 BC): A 10-year provincial command over the major frontier provinces (Spain, Gaul, Syria, Egypt) including the major legions. The title Augustus ("Revered One"). The recognition of his auctoritas. The framework was "restoration of the Republic."
Second Settlement (23 BC): Maius imperium proconsulare (greater proconsular power), allowing Augustus to override governors anywhere in the empire. Tribunicia potestas annually for life: the powers of the plebeian tribune without the office, including sacrosanctity, the veto, and the right to convene the senate. Augustus gave up the continuous consulship in exchange.
Significance: The two settlements established the legal basis of the principate without abolishing the Republican magistracies. Augustus avoided the title rex (king) and presented his power as a constitutional restoration.

Markers reward both settlements, the named powers, and the political framing.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation4 marksOutline the powers Octavian received in the First Settlement of 13-16 January 27 BC.

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A 4-mark "outline" wants several correct, sequenced features with brief development. Markers award roughly one mark per developed point.

Point 1: The staged "restoration." On 13 January 27 BC Octavian addressed the senate and theatrically "handed back" all his extraordinary powers to the senate and people, framing the moment as res publica restituta (the Republic restored).

Point 2: The provincia: Three days later, on 16 January, the senate granted him a 10-year command over Spain, Gaul, Syria and Egypt, the provinces holding most of the legions (around 20 of 28).
Point 3: The name Augustus: The senate voted him the new name Augustus ("Revered One"), a religious rather than political title, avoiding rex.
Point 4: Honorific recognition: He received the clipeus virtutis (golden shield of virtues: virtus, clementia, iustitia, pietas) in the Curia Julia and the corona civica (civic crown of oak leaves) above his doorway.

Markers reward correct dated detail (13-16 January 27 BC) and the link from each grant to the theatre of "restoration."

foundation3 marksWhy does Augustus describe his position in Res Gestae 34 as he does, and how should a historian treat that claim?

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A 3-mark "why" question needs explanation, not just quotation.

What he claims: Res Gestae 34 states that after 28-27 BC he "transferred the republic from my power to the discretion of the senate and Roman people," and famously that "in authority (auctoritate) I excelled all, but of power (potestatis) I held no more than those who were my colleagues in each magistracy" (auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt).
Why he says it: Res Gestae is Augustus's own funerary inscription, published after his death (AD 14) to fix his legacy; it is not a neutral constitutional record but a piece of self-justifying propaganda designed to show the principate as legal and consensual rather than monarchical.
How to treat it: A historian reads the claim against the reality: auctoritas was informal but, backed by legions, provinces and wealth, functioned as decisive power. The gap between the claimed "no more power than a colleague" and the actual 10-year provincia and later tribunicia potestas is exactly what Syme's "facade" thesis targets.

Markers reward accurate quotation/paraphrase of Res Gestae 34 and explicit source-critical comment on its purpose.

core5 marksSource A (owned reconstruction): a modern epigraphic reconstruction of a fragmentary Italian civic inscription, of the type set up after 27 BC, records a local town council voting honours to Augustus for 'restoring the res publica' and lists a dedication tied to his name and his tribunician years. Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain what such municipal evidence suggests about how the First Settlement was received outside Rome.

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A 5-mark "explain" with a source needs the evidence USED, own knowledge, and a qualification.

Use the source: Source A shows a local council actively adopting the "restoration" language of 27 BC and dating civic life by Augustus's tribunician years, evidence that the regime's own vocabulary (res publica restituta) was echoed and reproduced well beyond the senate house.
Own knowledge: After 27 BC, coinage, inscriptions and calendars across Italy and the provinces increasingly used Augustus's titulature (including tribunicia potestas year-counts once introduced from 23 BC) as the standard dating formula, showing the settlement's language becoming administrative practice, not just senatorial theatre.
Qualify it: Such inscriptions are themselves not neutral: local elites had strong incentive to flatter the new regime for patronage and status, so the evidence shows successful propaganda and genuine consensus (Eck's reading) rather than proof that the underlying constitutional reality matched the "restoration" claim.

Markers reward explicit use of the described source, correct dating/tribunician-year detail, and a balanced qualification.

core6 marksSOURCE ANALYSIS. Source B (owned paraphrase): a passage in the style of Cassius Dio's Roman History, Book 53, narrates the senate debate of January 27 BC, presenting Octavian's offer to lay down his powers as stage-managed and the senators' pleas for him to keep control as pre-arranged. Assess the usefulness and reliability of Source B for a historian investigating the First Settlement.

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A 6-mark source-analysis task needs balanced usefulness AND reliability, anchored in origin/motive/audience, plus own knowledge and a named historian.

Origin, motive, audience: The real Cassius Dio wrote his Roman History in the early third century AD, roughly 250 years after 27 BC, as a Greek senator under the Severan emperors reflecting back through the lens of the mature imperial system he lived under.
Usefulness: A passage of this type is useful because it captures the theatrical, choreographed character of the January 27 BC senate session, the "offer and refusal" pattern that ancient writers agreed was performance, and gives a detailed procedural narrative that Augustus's own Res Gestae glosses over.
Reliability: Reliability is limited by the long time gap, by Dio's tendency to project the constitutional vocabulary of his own later, more openly monarchical age back onto 27 BC, and by his hostile senatorial-class perspective on autocracy generally.
Historian: Ronald Syme (The Roman Revolution, 1939) treats such accounts as confirming that the "settlement" was a carefully rehearsed piece of political theatre, "a screen and a sham" for what was in substance monarchy; Werner Eck (The Age of Augustus, 2003) cautions that later hostile framing can overstate the cynicism of a genuinely novel and, for many contemporaries, welcome constitutional compromise. A historian therefore uses such a source for the sequence of events, corroborated against Res Gestae and coin/inscription evidence, while discounting its retrospective tone.

Markers reward origin/motive/audience analysis, BALANCED usefulness and limitations, and at least one named historian used as argument.

core5 marksExplain why the crisis of 23 BC forced Augustus to reorganise his constitutional position.

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A 5-mark "explain" needs the cause-and-effect chain, not narration alone.

The crisis: In 23 BC Augustus fell seriously ill (his doctor Antonius Musa's cold-water treatment reportedly saved him) and, believing he might die, handed his signet ring to Agrippa. Around the same time a conspiracy attributed to the consul Fannius Caepio and, in most ancient accounts, Aulus Terentius Varro Murena, was uncovered and its participants executed; the precise year and even the two men's exact relationship to each other are debated by modern historians because the ancient sources (Dio, Suetonius, Velleius) do not fully agree.
Why it mattered: The illness exposed that the regime had no accepted succession mechanism, and a conspiracy involving a sitting consul showed that Augustus's continuous occupation of one consulship annually was breeding senatorial resentment by blocking other nobles from the office.
The response: Augustus resigned the consulship he had held continuously since 31 BC and, in the Second Settlement of 23 BC, exchanged it for tribunicia potestas and maius imperium proconsulare, powers that did not depend on holding a specific annual magistracy and so removed the friction point.

Markers reward both named crises (illness, conspiracy), the flagged dating uncertainty, and the causal link to the Second Settlement.

exam8 marksOutline the differences between the powers Augustus held after the First Settlement (27 BC) and after the Second Settlement (23 BC).

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An 8-mark "outline" wants full, accurate coverage of both settlements with clear contrast.

After 27 BC: Continuous annual consulship (held since 31 BC); a 10-year provincia over Spain, Gaul, Syria and Egypt with the bulk of the legions; the name Augustus; recognised auctoritas; the clipeus virtutis and corona civica as honorific, not constitutional, grants. Power rested heavily on the consulship and the provincial command.
After 23 BC: No consulship (resigned); tribunicia potestas granted annually for life, giving sacrosanctity, the veto, and the right to convene the senate and assemblies, and functioning as the regime's dating system (regnal years counted from this grant); maius imperium proconsulare, letting him override any provincial governor, including in senatorial provinces, without holding a provincial magistracy himself.
The shift in character: The First Settlement tied power to holding actual Republican offices (consul, provincial governor); the Second Settlement detached power from any single office, making it personal, empire-wide and permanent, which is why most historians treat 23 BC as the true constitutional foundation of the principate.

Markers reward accurate powers under each settlement, correct dates, and the explicit "office-based versus personal" contrast.

exam25 marksESSAY. 'The First and Second Settlements were a screen and a sham for monarchy.' To what extent does this Syme-derived judgement withstand scrutiny?

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A band-6 essay sustains a judgement on "to what extent," marshals specific dated evidence from both settlements, and weaves competing historiography. This is a PLAN plus a model paragraph.

Thesis: Syme's verdict captures an essential truth, that the settlements clothed a regime resting ultimately on legions and Egyptian wealth in Republican forms, but "screen and sham" understates the genuine constitutional innovation and the real, if unequal, consensus the settlements secured; Eck's "third political form" and Galinsky's emphasis on consensus better explain the settlements' durability across four decades.
Argument line 1: the case for "screen and sham" (Syme): The First Settlement (13-16 January 27 BC) was theatre: Octavian's "return" of powers he had won by civil war was staged, and the senate's pleading response pre-arranged; he kept the consulship and the legions regardless. Res Gestae 34's claim to hold "no more power than my colleagues" sits awkwardly against a 10-year command over the provinces containing about 20 of 28 legions. Tacitus (Annals 1.2) is blunt: Augustus "seduced the soldiers with gifts, the people with grain, and everyone with the sweetness of peace," then "drew to himself the functions of the senate, the magistrates and the laws." Syme's Roman Revolution (1939) reads this as monarchy in Republican dress, secured by a faction that had simply won the last civil war.
Argument line 2: genuine constitutional substance: The Second Settlement of 23 BC is not merely cosmetic. Augustus gave up something real, the consulship he had held continuously since 31 BC, after the crisis of that year (his near-fatal illness and the Caepio-Murena conspiracy, whose exact dating and cast of conspirators the ancient sources themselves do not fully agree on). In exchange he accepted tribunicia potestas and maius imperium proconsulare, powers with defined legal content and precedent in Republican practice, not invented titles. Werner Eck (The Age of Augustus, 2003) argues this created a genuinely novel "third form" of government, neither Republic nor monarchy, that later emperors inherited as a working system rather than a fiction to be discarded.
Argument line 3: consensus, not just concealment: Karl Galinsky (Augustan Culture, 1996) stresses that auctoritas and the settlements' vocabulary of restoration were not simply imposed; they were widely and enthusiastically adopted, in coinage, inscriptions and municipal calendars across Italy and the provinces, suggesting real elite and popular buy-in to the new order after a generation of civil war, not passive submission to a "sham."
Model paragraph (argument line 2): Yet to call the Second Settlement merely a screen understates what actually changed in 23 BC. Augustus surrendered the one office, the consulship, that had visibly monopolised power and blocked ambitious nobles since 31 BC; in its place he took tribunicia potestas, a power with clear Republican precedent (sacrosanctity, the veto, the right to convene the senate) that no longer depended on holding a specific annual magistracy. As Eck argues, this converted an ad hoc arrangement into a durable constitutional office in all but name, one his successors could simply renew rather than reinvent. The crisis that provoked the change, Augustus's illness and the still-debated Caepio-Murena affair, shows the settlement responding to a real political problem, not merely dressing up an unchanged reality.
Conclusion: Syme's "screen and sham" rightly identifies that legions, wealth and faction, not law, were the ultimate foundation of Augustus's power, but Eck and Galinsky are needed to explain why the settlements proved so stable: they supplied a workable legal form and secured real consensus, not only concealment. Judgement sustained: substantially right, but not the whole story.

Marker's note: band 6 answers state a clear verdict on "to what extent," deploy precise dated evidence from BOTH settlements, and integrate at least two named historians (here Syme against Eck/Galinsky) as argument, not decoration. Describing the two settlements chronologically without engaging Syme's claim caps the response at mid-band.