1.1.21 to 1.1.22

Although the principate was not an office which could be automatically handed on, Augustus seemed to be indicating his views regarding his ultimate successor when he adopted the two sons of his daughter Julia, boys aged three and one, who were henceforward known as Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar. Their father, Agrippa, whose powers had been renewed along with his master's, returned to the east. But now Augustus also gave important employment to his stepsons—his wife Livia's sons by her former marriage—Tiberius and Drusus the Elder. Proceeding across the Alps, they annexed Noricum and Raetia, comprising large parts of what are now Switzerland, Austria, and Bavaria, and extended the imperial frontier from Italy to the upper Danube (16-15 BC). It was probably during these years that an executive, or drafting, committee (consilium )of the Senate was established in order to help Augustus to prepare senatorial business. His administrative burden was also lightened by the expansion of his own staff (knights, who could also now rise to a number of key posts, and freedmen) to form the beginnings of a civil service, which had never existed before but was destined to become an essential feature of the imperial system. Gradually, too, a completely reformed administrative structure of Rome, Italy, and the whole empire was evolved. The financial system that made this possible was evidently far more effective than anything the empire had ever seen until then. The system was based on the central treasury (aerarium), but the details of its relationship with the treasuries of the provinces, and particularly the provincia of Augustus, are still imperfectly understood, partly because, although the emperor proudly recorded his gifts to the central treasury, he did not report what funds passed in the opposite direction.