ABSTRACT
Hard-pressed taxpayers such as the fishermen of Gyaros knew already in 30 BC to whom they should apply for relief. Augustus own organisation of his vast public funds, which served most of the army, was part of his official functions, as a governor of four major areas and any that accrued, and he made use, as governors customarily had, of his own slaves and freedmen, as he naturally did also for his private funds. His concern for the current Roman birth-rate was nothing new; he expressed it by reading out to the Senate the speech uttered in 131 BC by a conservative censor, Q. Caecilius Macedonicus. The Senate in its appreciation decreed him cult, priests and temple, just as in 43 BC it had granted him his first imperium. At the centre we find equestrian posts devised by Augustus late in his principate to deal with fire-fighting, security and the grain supply.
