legal

Second Triumvirate Established by Lex Titia

Date

-43

Part of

legal

On November 27, 43 BCE, the lex Titia created the Second Triumvirate—Octavian, Antony, Lepidus—with near-plenary powers for five years. The title itself claimed purpose: triumvirs for reconstituting the state. Revolution acquired paperwork, and legality became a weapon.

What Happened

After the confused victories at Mutina and shifting alliances, Octavian marched on Rome not as supplicant but as kingmaker. He and Mark Antony, reconciled, brought Marcus Aemilius Lepidus into a pact with something the First Triumvirate lacked: a law.

Passed in Rome and promulgated across Italy, the lex Titia named them triumviri rei publicae constituendae—triumvirs for settling the state—for five years, later renewed. They could appoint magistrates, make war and peace, and issue decrees with the force of statute. The Curia’s marble absorbed a new theory: if the Republic was broken, it could be rebuilt by commission.

The mechanics mattered. Boards listed new appointees; edicts posted in the Forum and at Capua and Brundisium carried the triumvirs’ seals. As their agents fanned out to Sicily, Macedonia, and Gaul, the city learned a new cadence: announcements from the consuls, then orders from the triumvirs, then silence.

The color of the regime was administrative gray—the ink of edicts, the wax of seals—but the sound was martial: the tramp of levies raised for the coming war against Brutus and Cassius in the East. Law had not ended violence; it had organized it.

Why This Matters

By grounding extraordinary power in statute, the lex Titia legitimized what force had already achieved: the supremacy of those who commanded legions. The triumvirs could legislate, judge, and punish without the friction of annual terms or collegial vetoes.

This legal shell also insulated future acts, especially proscriptions, from charges of improvisation. Sulla’s precedent became state policy, stamped with authority. The Republic’s forms—laws, boards, seals—now carried content defined by three men.

The commission proved elastic. It financed war, rearranged provinces, and disciplined cities. When Octavian later claimed to “restore” the Republic, he would point to laws like this as both cause and cure, even as they normalized emergency rule.