The Consilium Grew Out Of The Normal Gathering Of Family And Friends That

The Consilium grew out of the normal gathering of family and friends that surrounded any nobles, and whose advice he would take on important issues. In its fully evolved form Augustus' Consilium comprised one or both of the consuls, a praetor, an aedile and a quaestor, and fifteen senators drawn by lot the Consilium was an exercise in psychology. On really important matters advice would be taken from a much smaller, select group of amici, and business would be well prepared before it came anywhere near the Consilium.
After Augustus' death (appropriately) in August of the year AD 18 the power of the state was passed over to the former Emperor's named successor, Tiberius. With this final act, Augustus ensured that the Senate would not be able to regain the position that it had held seventy years previously as the sole arbitrator of Roman authority. The Army and the Senate fell quickly into line as the view was adopted that peace at any cost was preferable to the debacle that brought about the fall of the Republic.
Before attempting a conclusion a note must be made of the sources writing during the first centuries BC and AD. The chief sources are Tacitus, Pliny and Suetonius with the latter constituting the chief biographer for Augustus at that time. Yet according to Andrew WallaceHadrill, Suetonius in particular ought not to be misinterpreted as a factual historical account. Negatively, Suetonius wrote nonhistory; positively, he wrote scholarship.
Much of the historian's source material for this period in Roman history is therefore biased and should be considered more as a form of literature than a strict adherence to historical fact.
Conclusion
The Senate lost its power the day it declared a state of war against the armies of Julius Caesar, a decline that was finalised with the victory of Octavian. However, to believe that power was transferred to a comparable elected body in the form of the Principate is an illusion. Rome, never a broad manifestation of enlightened enfranchisement, became a dictatorship, albeit one that wore the mask of legality.
Of equal importance to the future governance of the Roman Empire was the fundamental change in status of the professional army. During the reign of the Principate the Senate not only ceded its legitimate logistical control to the reconfigured state but it also lost its position of power to the army, a veneer that could never be fully reclaimed during the age of empire.
Augustus moved the Roman world away from the closely knit aristocratic world of the republic towards a vastly more complex empire.
With each new territory added to the Empire the role of the Senate was further reduced as, over time, barbarians were admitted into civil life, granted citizenship and assimilated into the Roman military machine.