Leiden conventions rendered as EpiDoc: restorations as supplied(reason=lost), gaps as gap, abbreviations as expan(abbr+ex), omitted letters as supplied(reason=omitted), surplus as surplus, corrections as corr. Critical apparatus as listApp. The facing translation is div type=translation; the historical commentary is div type=commentary.
[—] and that it be lawful for him to make treaties with whomsoever he wishes, just as it was lawful for the Divine Augustus, for Tiberius Iulius Caesar Augustus, and for Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus; and that it be lawful for him to convene the Senate, to make a motion and to withdraw it, and to have decrees of the Senate passed by motion and by division, just as it was lawful for the Divine Augustus, for Tiberius Iulius Caesar Augustus, and for Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus; and that whenever the Senate is convened by his will, authority, command or order, or in his presence, the validity of all business be held and observed exactly as if the Senate had been convened and held by law;
and that, in the case of those candidates for a magistracy, a power, an imperium, or the charge of any matter whom he commends to the Senate and the Roman people, or to whom he gives or promises his electoral support, special account be taken of them at each election, whether regular or extraordinary; and that it be lawful for him to advance and extend the boundary of the pomerium when he judges it to be in the interest of the state, just as it was lawful for Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus;
and that whatever he judges to be in accordance with the advantage of the state, and with the majesty of things divine and human, public and private, he shall have the right and the power to transact and to do, just as the Divine Augustus, and Tiberius Iulius Caesar Augustus, and Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus had;
and that from those laws and plebiscites in which it was written that the Divine Augustus, or Tiberius Iulius Caesar Augustus, or Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus were not to be bound, the Emperor Caesar Vespasian shall be released; and that whatever it was proper for the Divine Augustus, or Tiberius Iulius Caesar Augustus, or Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus to do by virtue of any law or rogation, it shall be lawful for the Emperor Caesar Vespasian Augustus to do all those things; and that whatever was done, transacted, decreed or ordered before the passing of this law by the Emperor Caesar Vespasian Augustus, or by anyone at his order or command, shall be lawful and binding just as if it had been done by the order of the people or the plebs.
Sanctio. If anyone, on account of this law, has done or shall do anything contrary to laws, rogations, plebiscites or decrees of the Senate, or shall not have done, on account of this law, something which by a law, rogation, plebiscite or decree of the Senate it would be proper for him to do, let it not be held against him as an offence, nor let him owe anything to the people on that account, nor let there be action or adjudication against anyone in that matter, nor let anyone allow proceedings concerning that matter to be brought before him.
The surviving bronze opens in mid-clause — the law's first tablet, with its praescriptio and earliest powers, is lost. The first legible grants are the power to make treaties and the full command of the Senate: to convene it, lay motions before it, withdraw them, and carry its decrees. Each grant is justified by the same formula — ita uti licuit diuo Augusto, Ti. Iulio Caesari, Ti. Claudio Caesari, ‘just as it was lawful for’ Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 39, 549–553).
That formula is the heart of the document's logic. The powers are not invented for Vespasian; they are precedent — assembled from what earlier emperors had held. The law makes the new ruler the heir of a constructed tradition, and pointedly omits the disgraced Gaius and Nero from the list of models (Brunt, JRS 67, 1977, 95–116).
Two further powers. The first is the commendatio — the emperor's recommendation of candidates for office, of which ‘special account’ is to be taken at elections. By AD 70 the comitia ratified the emperor's choices; the clause gives that practice the force of statute. The second is the right to extend the pomerium, the sacred boundary of the city — a religious-constitutional act here justified by the precedent of Claudius alone (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 39, 552).
The sixth clause is the most famous — and the most debated — sentence of the Roman constitution. The emperor may do whatever he judges to be in accordance with the advantage of the state and the majesty of things divine and human, public and private. It is a clause of open-ended discretion: where the other grants name a specific power, this one names none, and authorises the emperor's judgement itself.
Scholars dispute whether it conferred a sweeping general competence or merely a residual catch-all; either way it shows the law's method at its limit — the attempt to write imperial power into statute runs out, at last, into a grant of trust. The same clause exposes a flaw the law never resolves: a power that rests on the holder's own judgement cannot really be bounded by the document that grants it (Brunt, JRS 67, 1977, 95–116).
The seventh and eighth clauses look backward. The first releases Vespasian from any law or plebiscite that had bound — or rather, exempted — his predecessors: he is legibus solutus, ‘freed from the laws’, in exactly the measure they were. The second ratifies retroactively everything Vespasian had already done since 1 July AD 69 — the day the legions of Egypt acclaimed him — as though the people had ordered it (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 39, 552).
The retroactive clause is the law's quiet admission of how the reign began: Vespasian had been emperor in fact for many months before he was emperor in law. The statute does not create his power; it regularises a power already seized, and dates its own legitimacy backward to meet it.
The law closes with a sanctio headed, in inscribed letters, by the word itself. But it is a sanctio turned inside out. A normal penalty clause threatens those who break the law; this one indemnifies the emperor in advance — anyone acting under the law, even against other laws or decrees of the Senate, incurs no offence, no debt to the people, no action at law (Crawford, Roman Statutes I, 1996, no. 39, 553).
It is the logical end-point of the discretionary clause: having granted the emperor a power above the laws, the statute must shield every exercise of it from the laws. The Lex de imperio Vespasiani is, in form, a lex — a measure of the sovereign people — and, in substance, the people legislating their own supersession.