How did Augustus aka Octavian change Roman government?
Augustus filled the senate with his supporters and reduced its number (while civil war was raging, Sula and Caesar reformed the senat by filling it with barbaric foreigners and raising it’s number to 600 aka 900 members). Augustus assumed thetribunician power (tribunicia potestas) which enabled him to veto laws, proconsular power (maius and infinitum) which enabled him to control all provinces and all the legions, and finally, he assumed the power of pontifex maximus (after Lepid’s death) which made chief of all religious tracts and festivals. In 27 BC he was awarded the tilte “princeps senatus”. It is an honourific office which was practised even before Octavian’s rise to power. The princeps had a chance to be the first to speak in senat’s sittings and was always the first to express his opinion. Augustus also formed the infamous Praetorian Guard which was designed to protect the emperors, but it more often murdered them and put their own favourite in the emperor’s place. Yet, they we
