A legitimação do poder econômico e da governabilidade de Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus Augustus direcionada à plebe romana (23 a.C. – 14 d.C.)

Abstract

Economic History, after a period of considerable reductionism and abandonment, today revives an important recovery phase of its production. Not only classics from other eras are being revisited, but also a generation of new researches in the Social, Cultural and Political History fields is emerging as a result of this movement. This new process initiated made it possible to analyze the economic bias through contact and dialogue with other fields of knowledge, the interdisciplinary dialogue, which did not previously exist. Through this multidisciplinary contact, it made viable the economic analysis of the political testament of Octavianus Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, regarding the study of the imperial economy in this period, in which the financial assistance, donations, constructions and all the festive pomp of the princeps aimed to the Roman commoners, made possible a re-reading of the document in question and the establishment intrinsic fundamentals to the studies of Economics in Antiquity. In order to demystify and/or expand the discussions and historiographic debates carried out around the attributions of the post of plebis tribunus and the powers that surround it, we seek to establish extremely pertinent nuances that relating the powers and titles instituted to Augustus, whose practices have an intrinsic relationship with the participation of princeps to the commoners as part of the inclusive concerns of this social segment in the economic policy of the Principality, to constitute the pillars of the process of legitimating their power in Rome. Aware of the existence of a wide historiography on the theme of the bread and circus policy of the romans - an expression coined in Juvenal's age-old writings which, certainly in a lucid and empirical way, presents a different point of view on the thematic - we are conditioned to the development of research in order to establish, through possible historiography, a relationship between the political action practiced by Augustus, whose main target was the Roman commoners, in order to achieve his goals as a peacekeeper, benevolent leader and pater familias, that is, the princeps of the provisions needed by the Roman commoners. The use of the bread and circus policy by Augustus, with the intention of supporting the commoners in supporting their system of government, contributed to the greater insertion of this social segment in the economy in the Principality.