On Augustus' Moral Law And Its Influence

After beating Marcus Antonius in Actium in BC 31, Octavian built the new empire and had been the ruler. At the beginning of new empire, Octavian turned to a series of reform such as economic, politic, culture. And Augustus's moral law is one of the most important reforms. From 300 BC, with increasing communication with the outside world, the simple and traditional moral ideas of old days had gone. At the strong striking of eastern life concept, people began to freely choose their spouses, get a divorce, commit adultery, or have cohabitation. At the background mentioned above, the government of Augustus attempted to interfere personal morality by legal means, for the purpose of establishing and shaping the new empire culture. The main content of Augustus's moral legislation is that normalizing marriage by rewards and punishments, punishing adultery, and restricting bribery and sumptuary. Augustus's moral legislation has important status in Roman law history, which builds a connecting link between the preceding and the following, and that is an important material makes people better understand society of that time. As a consequence, this article attempts to analyze the background, content, characteristic, and influence of Augustus's legislation from materialistic conception of history and global historical view.This article divided into three parts:introduction, main body, and epilogue. The part of introduction mainly presents domestic and overseas research situation, research significance. The main body of article has three parts:the first part includes problems of development of Roman law, changes in transformation period of Roman Republic, the end of civil war in the final stage of Roman republic and the establishment of principate; the second part emphatically analyzes the process and content of the establishment of Augustus's legislation, which includes lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus, lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis, lex Papia Poppaea, lex Iulia de sumptuary, lex Iulia de Ambitu, the reasons of the establishment of Augustus's moral legislation from population, politics, morality, ideology and characteristic:The third part analyzes the influence of moral law, which includes the effect on later laws, changes of government functions, and enhancing interference of government on personal's morality. At last, it enlightens us to put research object into the whole history process when we study history issues, and comprehensively analyzes history questions from macroscopic and microcosmic perspective.