Opposition Under the Caesars

The work of the famous 19th-century French historian Gaston Boucher is presented for the readers' attention. The book examines the time of the successors of Augustus, when the new authoritarian regime was already firmly established, but by encasing Roman society in the vise of a new order, it could provoke discontent among those circles that had not completely severed ties with traditional republican beliefs. Opposition moods, and at times vivid outbreaks of discontent, were an integral part of Roman social life during the imperial era. But who exactly constituted the opposition to the Caesars? Boucher convincingly argues that neither the army, nor the provinces, nor the municipalities were enemies of the regime. It was among the secular society and Roman writers that there were opposition sentiments, the scholar asserts.