Augustus - Founder of the Roman Empire Documentary

The man known to history as Caesar Augustus was born on the 23rd of September 63 BC, on the Palatine Hill in the city of Rome, the capital of the then Roman Republic. In Roman times individuals often had many different names, some being constructs to acknowledge great deeds or the manner in which they wanted to depict themselves. Consequently Caesar Augustus is a constructed name which he later came to be known by. The man who would one day become the first emperor of Rome was actually born as Gaius Octavius or Gaius Octavian and is typically referred to

in his youth and early adult years as Octavian. His father, also Gaius Octavius, was a member of the Octavia Roman clan, from the equestrian class. The Octavia were not part of the Senatorial aristocracy, but had risen to a position of considerable significance in Rome by the first century BC as a result of several generations of the family providing military and political service to the Republic. As a result Gaius was considered a ‘novus homo’ or a ‘new man’. This was a term which was applied to many individuals who had risen to positions of wealth and authority

in Rome, but who came from socially inferior clans, as a way of differentiating them from the patrician classes of the Senatorial families who could trace their lineage back several centuries. Octavian’s mother was Atia Balba, a daughter of Marcus Atius Balbus, a Roman politician who served as a praetor of Rome, one of the Republic’s senior magistrates, the year after Octavian was born, and his wife Julia Minor, the sister of Julius Caesar. Thus, Octavian was born into a notable Roman political family on both his mother’s and his father’s sides. Octavian’s very first years were turbulent. The city

of Rome had increased dramatically in population and size during the late second century BC and early first century BC. As it became increasingly overcrowded many richer families of Roman citizens elected to spend more time outside the city at their villas and estates around Italy. Octavian’s family were no different and he was quickly sent to the family ancestral lands at Velletri, approximately forty kilometres south of Rome. However, the more significant development in his early years was the death of his father in 59 BC when Octavian was still shy of his fourth birthday. His mother quickly remarried

to Lucius Marius Philippus, a member of a senior Roman aristocratic family. But this was not an ideal marriage for young Octavian as Marius took little interest in his new step-son. As a result, Octavian was largely placed in the care of his grandmother Julia in the 50s BC, whose brother Gaius Julius Caesar would play a major role in Octavian’s younger years as well as his ascent to become Emperor of Rome. Octavian was evidently very close to his grandmother and when she died in 51 BC he gave the funeral oration, despite being only twelve years old. It

is not possible to understand Octavian’s subsequent life without examining the politics of Rome in the first half of the first century BC. Octavian was born into a volatile period in the history of the Roman Republic. On the one hand Rome had never been more powerful. Beginning in the third century BC the Republic had begun expanding from its small base in Central Italy, first coming to dominate the Western Mediterranean after two major wars against its rival, the city state of Carthage in what is now Tunisia. Rome emerged victorious from what were known as the Punic Wars

and by the early second century BC was in control of all of Italy and much of Spain. Further rapid conquests occurred in the century that followed, effectively bringing southern Gaul, Carthage itself and Greece under the rule of Rome. These conquests would continue unabated in the decades leading up to Octavian’s birth. But there was a contradiction at the heart of Rome’s expansion. While its military power increased, the Republic itself was in mortal danger, as the generals of the Roman legions became ever more powerful. And in 83 BC a civil war had even broken out between the

two foremost Roman generals of the age, Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Sulla emerged victorious from this in 81 BC and became dictator of Rome. And while he did resign that position in 79 BC and restore the Republic a year before his own death, many wondered how long it would be before another general emerged to seize power on a more permanent basis. The answer to that particular question, many at Rome imagined, would lie amongst the three individuals who had formed a loose political alliance in 60 BC just three years after Octavian was born. The most

famous of the three at the time was Pompeius Magnus. He had risen as a supporter of Sulla in the 80s BC, but he had carved out his own path between 79 BC and the mid-60s BC by leading Roman armies to several great victories in the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing regions like Syria under Roman rule and earning the name Pompey the Great in the process. Like Pompey, Marcus Licinius Crassus had been a follower of Sulla’s before rising to prominence himself by becoming the richest man in the Republic and crushing the rebellion led by the gladiator Spartacus in

southern Italy in the late 70s BC. The third member of what became known as the First Triumvirate was the only one who had been on the side of Marius in the earlier civil war. Despite this, Gaius Julius Caesar had managed to return to prominence in Rome in the 70s and 60s BC after he obtained several senior political offices and then conquered parts of Hispania on the Iberian Peninsula in the late 60s BC. As noted, Caesar was the brother of Octavian’s grandmother Julia. And in the 50s BC, as Octavian was growing up, these three men would

vie to become the dominant figure in the Roman Republic. As Octavian entered his teenage years the political situation was taking another major turn. During the 50s BC, the three triumvirs had experienced varying fortunes. Crassus led an army against the Parthian Empire in what is now Iraq in the mid-50s BC and in 53 BC he was killed at the Battle of Carrhae in what was one of the worst defeats ever experienced by Roman forces. Conversely, Caesar had undertaken in the early 50s BC to conquer Gaul, the region approximating with modern-day France and which was then inhabited

by a great number of Celtic tribes. He was enormously successful in this enterprise, effectively extending the northern borders of the Roman Republic from the Alps all the way north to the English Channel and the North Sea in the space of a few years in the 50s BC. Meanwhile, as Caesar’s star was in the ascendant in Gaul, Pompey floundered in Rome, unable to acquire a military command which would raise his status back to what it had been in years gone by. But he still had strong support from the Roman Senate, which viewed Caesar and his growing

power as a potential mortal threat to the Republic. Thus, a new civil war was brewing, one between Caesar backed by much of the Roman army and Pompey backed by the Senate. Octavian would soon grow closer to his great uncle during the 40s BC at the same time as Caesar was emerging as the Sulla of his age. In 50 BC relations between Pompey’s faction in Rome and Caesar in Gaul had reached a crisis point. Anxious to limit Caesar’s power, the Roman Senate was attempting to prevent him standing for a new term as consul of Rome, the

highest political office in the Republic, and they were also trying to strip him of his military command. Pressured by these efforts, Caesar brought his armies south from Gaul towards Italy and on the 10th of January 49 BC crossed the Rubicon River in north-east Italy. This was a boundary beyond which no Roman general was allowed to bring his troops and in crossing it, Caesar was effectively initiating a civil war. In the weeks that followed, Pompey and his followers evacuated Italy and headed for the Eastern Mediterranean. Greece now became the main theatre of operations, where Caesar initially

lost the Battle of Dyrhaccium in July 48 BC, but followed it up with a resounding victory over Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus just weeks later. Pompey subsequently fled to Egypt where he was killed by the Ptolemaic regime. The civil war would drag on for three more years in mopping up operations in parts of North Africa and Spain, but the events of 48 BC had effectively left Caesar in command of the Roman Republic. There is a popular misconception that Julius Caesar now became the first emperor of Rome. This is not true. Caesar held the title

of dictator during the 40s BC. This should not be confused with the modern idea of a dictator who holds absolute power and refuses to accept any challengers to their authority. In Rome dictatorial powers were regularly given by the Roman Senate to an individual to hold extensive authority in civil and military affairs during a period of crisis. Thus, for instance, the Roman politician and general, Quintus Fabius Maximus, was granted dictatorial powers by the Senate in 217 BC during the Second Punic War when the Carthaginian general Hannibal had invaded Italy by bringing an army over the Alps

from Carthage’s European base in Spain. He relinquished these powers after a short time, as had Sulla just two years after he won the civil war against Marius in the late 80s BC. As such, Caesar was operating within a relatively normal constitutional arrangement when he served as dictator in the 40s BC, but what was at issue was that, as the years went by, it seemed that he would never relinquish his dictatorial powers. However, it is important to note that he never made himself Emperor of Rome and that constitutional novelty would be an invention of Octavian’s ascent

to power twenty years later. During this period of immense political change, young Octavian had been growing closer to his great uncle and also finding his own way in the world of Roman politics. Following his grandmother’s death he had gone back to live with his own mother and step-father. In 47 BC, when he was just fifteen, he was elected to the College of Pontiffs, a caste of Roman priests, while in 46 BC he played a significant role in organising the version of the Olympic Games which were held at this time. He was also anxious to prove

himself militarily and had petitioned his mother from early on in the civil war to be allowed to join his great uncle on campaigns. She initially refused, but eventually acquiesced towards the end of the conflict and Octavian saw some of the last actions of the war in Hispania in 46 BC where the remnants of Pompey’s supporters were making their last stand. Octavian evidently made a major impression on Caesar who sometime in late 46 BC or 45 BC altered his will to both adopt Octavian and make him his principal heir. Adoptions of this kind were very common

amongst the Roman nobility at the time and Octavian’s position as the primary beneficiary of Caesar’s will was relatively uncomplicated by the fact that Caesar did not have any legitimate male heirs of his own, although he had fathered an illegitimate son with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra in 47 BC. Caesar’s adoption of Octavian and his naming of him as the primary beneficiary of his will were more vital than Caesar could have known at the time that he made that decision, for ultimately the Roman dictator was not long for the world. As the months rolled by after the

end of the civil war with Caesar giving no indication that he intended to renounce his dictatorial powers, a conspiracy was developing amongst the ranks of the Roman Senate to assassinate him. Although word of the conspiracy slipped out shortly before the assassination was to take place, the individual who learned of it, one of Caesar’s closest commanders from his days in Gaul, Marcus Antonius, typically known as Mark Anthony, was prevented from alerting Caesar to the danger he was in. Accordingly, when Caesar entered the Senate on the 15th of March, the Ides of March, 44 BC, one of

the great festival days in the Roman calendar, he did not know what was about to occur. In the minutes that followed, a group of senators surrounded him and began stabbing him furiously. Most near-contemporary accounts agree that Caesar did not say anything as he was swiftly killed and the idea, popularised later in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, that the great commander turned to one of his assailants, Marcus Brutus, a former protégé of his, and said ‘Et tu, Brute?’, meaning ‘And you, Brutus?’ is most likely a colourful invention. Octavian was not in Rome at the time of Caesar’s

assassination, but was undertaking military training in Illyria, the region on the west of the Adriatic Sea corresponding with modern-day Croatia and Albania. The later Roman historical biographer, Suetonius, stated that Octavian considered whether he should try to assemble an army from amongst the Roman legions in order to claim power when he heard of his great uncle’s death, but this is unlikely given Octavian was still just eighteen years of age at this time. He did head straight for Rome, though, upon learning of Caesar’s death and it would only have been at this time that he learned that

Caesar had made him the primary beneficiary of his very sizeable estate. Moreover, the fact that Caesar had adopted Octavian made him the successor to his great uncle’s political power in the eyes of Caesar’s many followers. Thus, although he was still a very young man, with only limited experience of military campaigning, Octavian had both the financial power and the support network which was needed to begin asserting himself in Rome’s politics in the power vacuum which followed his great uncle’s assassination in 44 BC. To broadcast his role as Caesar’s political heir he adopted his name at this

point, adding Caesar to his titles. While the clique of Roman senators who had assassinated Caesar had intended to restore Republican rule, they were soon frustrated in their efforts. Within weeks figures such as Brutus had been forced to flee Rome following an inflammatory eulogy given by Mark Anthony at Caesar’s funeral in which he denounced the conspirators. In the months that followed they would be condemned as traitors as Caesar’s supporters reasserted some control over the government. And with individuals such as Brutus out of the way, Roman politics once again descended into a battle between a number of

military commanders and interested groups to see who could succeed Caesar as the new dictator of the Republic. Foremost amongst the possible candidates was Mark Anthony who was serving as consul at the time and who was in a position of strength. Yet others were wary of Anthony, viewing him as an individual who would simply become the next in a line of over-mighty political generals which included Sulla and Caesar in recent times. This faction began to give their support to Octavian and others such as Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another one of Caesar’s close allies from Gaul and the

civil war. The emergence of these opposing factions would ensure that no one individual would succeed Caesar in the immediate aftermath of his assassination. Despite his youth and relative inexperience, Octavian showed just how astute a politician he could be within weeks. In the months following Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC he had acquired vast sums of money in Italy. Part of this was the war chest of 700 million sesterces, or silver coins, which had been accumulated in southern Italy to pay for a massive military campaign which Caesar had been planning at the time of his death against

Rome’s foremost enemy, the Parthian Empire far to the east in Mesopotamia. Octavian had re-appropriated a substantial amount of this money to himself and then had augmented it by effectively stealing the enormous tribute which arrived from Rome’s client states in the Eastern Mediterranean later that year. Now in late 44 BC and early 43 BC he put this money to good use, bribing two of Mark Anthony’s legions to follow him and also recruiting thousands of Caesar’s former supporters across Italy. To copper-fasten his swift seizure of Italy, Octavian had himself made a senator and in a highly unusual

move was quickly given the right to vote on certain matters which were usually reserved for senators who had previously served as consuls. Finally, in mid-43 BC he marched on Rome with several legions and demanded to be made consul himself, as both the consuls who had been appointed for the year had died in military campaigns. He encountered virtually zero opposition and as a result the 19 year old became the sole consul, the most significant political office in the Republic. Octavian had clearly emerged as a significant political figure on a par with Mark Anthony and Lepidus. The

emergence of these rivals for power soon led to a new political arrangement in Rome which mirrored that which had been agreed to by Caesar, Crassus and Pompey in 60 BC. On the 27th of November 43 BC the Roman Senate passed the Lex Titia, a law which formally divided power within the Roman Republic between Octavian, Mark Anthony and Lepidus. This Second Triumvirate, as it has become known, differed in significant ways from the earlier First Triumvirate. The First had effectively been a private and informal agreement between Caesar, Crassus and Pompey to co-operate with each other, while the

Second Triumvirate was a formal agreement which had the backing of the Senate and effectively divided the Republic into three spheres of influence which the three triumvirs would rule. Octavian was given control over the region corresponding to Tunisia and Libya in North Africa, as well as Sardinia and Corsica. Hispania and southern Gaul were granted to Lepidus, while Mark Anthony controlled the Alpine region and most of Gaul. The Senate would control Rome itself and Italy, while much of the Republic’s territories in the Eastern Mediterranean had fallen into the hands of others such as Brutus and Gaius Cassius

Longinus who had assassinated Caesar. As these lands in the east constituted the richer parts of the empire whichever of the triumvirs could seize the region would be best placed to emerge victorious amongst the triumvirs in the years that followed. The first years of the Second Triumvirate saw Octavian, Mark Anthony and Lepidus acting cordially and in conjunction with each other. Firstly, they began strengthening their position by proscribing former opponents of Caesar’s. Proscription was a process whereby Roman citizens were effectively outlawed by the Republic and had their estates confiscated. By proscribing hundreds of wealthy individuals the three

triumvirs came into possession of vast estates and wealth which they used to reward their followers and strengthen their own factions. Together, the three began the work of crushing those who had assassinated Caesar and who had taken control of much of Rome’s territories in the Eastern Mediterranean. Octavian and Mark Anthony took the lead in this, bringing 28 legions across the Adriatic Sea to Greece. From there they marched north and met with the forces led by Brutus and Cassius near Phillipi in Macedonia. The resulting battle involved upwards of 200,000 men. In the clash casualties were actually relatively

limited and no side was the clear victor in military terms, however when Cassius was given false information that Brutus’s forces had been defeated he committed suicide and Brutus did the same when he learned of Cassius’s actual fate. Thereafter their forces surrendered. It was a bizarre end to the wars which followed from Caesar’s assassination. The power dynamics of the Second Triumvirate shifted considerably in the aftermath of the victory at Phillipi. Lepidus, who had always been the least powerful of the three triumvirs, was quickly marginalised on the back of a spurious lie invented by Octavian and Mark

Anthony that he had been secretly providing aid to Sextus Pompeius, a son of Pompey the Great who had seized control of Sicily in the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination. With Lepidus removed in this way, Octavian and Mark Anthony agreed on a new division of power, whereby Octavian would effectively control the western parts of the Republic, notably Italy, Gaul, Hispania and the North African provinces, while Mark Anthony would control the eastern provinces such as Greece and Syria, as well as exercising influence over the many client kingdoms in this region such as Ptolemaic Egypt which were not formally

part of the Roman Republic, but which were effectively vassals who paid tribute to Rome. Then, to cement the new dispensation, an agreement was reached whereby Anthony married Octavian’s sister, Octavia, in October 40 BC. The alliance, as uneasy as it was, would hold for nearly a decade. One of Octavian’s most pressing problems following the effective division of the Republic between himself and Anthony was the presence of Sextus Pompeius in Sicily. Pompeius had ensconced himself firmly on the island which sat right on the shipping routes between the Western and Eastern Mediterranean, and he had even managed to

gain a hold of Sardinia and Corsica, having built up a formidable navy. By attacking and seizing shipping passing by the islands from the Eastern Mediterranean to Rome Pompeius was able to interfere in the supplies of grain and other foodstuffs to Rome. The Eternal City was heavily reliant on such deliveries from Egypt and other countries to feed its swelling population and provide the famous ‘bread dole’ to its citizens. Consequently, something needed to be done to remove Pompeius from Sicily. Initially an agreement was brokered in 39 BC, the Pact of Misenum, whereby Sextus was acknowledged in his

possession of the islands if he would cease attacking Roman shipping, however once his plundering recommenced, after a few months Octavian determined to act and sent his foremost commander, Marcus Agrippa, to crush Sextus, a feat which he eventually accomplished in 36 BC. Pompeius fled to the east where he was captured on the Greek island of Miletus and executed the following year. The conclusion of the war against Pompeius in Sicily also led to a further disintegration of the Second Triumvirate. Lepidus had been side-lined years earlier, but the removal of Sextus from the Italian islands in 36 BC

now saw him try to re-establish himself by seizing Sicily. Octavian made clear his dominance of the Western Mediterranean in the months that followed by sending his armies south, upon which Lepidus’s own legions defected to Caesar’s adopted heir. Octavian had once again shown his belief that gold was the key to loyalty here and had made it known to Lepidus’s legionnaires that they would receive generous payments if they relinquished their allegiance to their commander. As a result of their defection, the third triumvir was stripped of all his political offices by Octavian, other than the largely ceremonial position

of Pontifex Maximus or chief priest of Rome. Yet Lepidus was allowed to retire peacefully to Cape Circei not far from Rome and he would live for nearly another quarter of a century once he agreed to largely stay out of Roman politics. But the immediate consequence of his fall in the mid-30s BC was that there were now definitively only two triumvirs left and the showdown between Octavian and Mark Anthony loomed ever nearer. While Octavian was enjoying these successes in the west, Anthony was experiencing some trouble in the east. In the late 40s BC Anthony had struck

up a relationship with Cleopatra, the Queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, who had previously been the lover of Julius Caesar and had even borne him a son named Caesarion. Making his base in Egypt in the early 30s BC Anthony had determined to strengthen his position relative to Octavian by undertaking further conquests on the eastern borders of the Republic. In particular he was anxious to rejuvenate Caesar’s earlier plans to make war on the Parthian Empire in Mesopotamia. Thus, in 36 BC he invaded Parthia with a massive force. However, the invasion soon turned to disaster as Anthony’s main force

was separated from the baggage trains of supplies and siege equipment. When a mobile force of Parthian cavalry intercepted and destroyed much of the latter, the Roman general was forced to retreat back towards Roman territory in Syria, losing further men along the way as his forces were harried by the Parthians. The campaign had turned into a disaster, the embarrassment of which was only partially remedied by his conquest of the Kingdom of Armenia in 34 BC and installation of his son, Alexander Helios, as its king. This was the context in which Octavian made his major grab for

total power over the Republic. Anthony’s absence from the Eternal City, his relationship with Cleopatra and seeming preference for the Egyptian capital of Alexandria over Rome, and the nepotism he showed towards his followers in the east, all provided ammunition for Octavian and his faction to begin claiming that Anthony wished to seize power in the Republic and begin building a new realm of which Egypt and the city of Alexandria would be the heartland. Octavian was particularly bullish in claiming this as he was angered by Anthony’s embarrassing of his sister, Octavia, to whom Anthony was still married, through

his very public relationship with Cleopatra. Moreover, Octavian was actually able to substantiate his claims that Anthony was orientalising. In 32 BC he entered the Temple of the Vestal Virgins in Rome and removed Anthony’s will which was housed there. With this he was able to demonstrate that Anthony had plans to divide up the Republic’s eastern territories between his family and supporters and that he wished to be entombed at Alexandria following his death. This, combined with Anthony’s celebration of his conquest of Armenia by holding a triumph in Alexandria rather than at Rome, seemed to confirm Octavian’s argument

that Anthony was effectively turning into an eastern despot who would expel Rome from its eastern territories if left unchecked. In late 32 BC, following this campaign to undermine Anthony, the Senate in Rome finally agreed to revoke Anthony’s powers and declared war on Ptolemaic Egypt. A new civil war had begun. Yet Octavian did not have unequivocal support in the west. As much as forty-percent of the Roman Senate had voted against the war and a large majority of these now left the capital and headed east with their supporters to join Anthony’s cause in Egypt. In the months

that followed, the largest military build-up that had accompanied any Roman civil war occurred. By the summer of 31 BC Octavian had pulled together forces which numbered approximately 200,000 men. To put this in perspective, Caesar had only commanded roughly 25,000 men at the Battle of Pharsalus, the decisive engagement in his civil war against Pompey in the early autumn of 48 BC. And Octavian’s massive military build-up was matched by Anthony, who was also able to field about 200,000 men. Just as significantly, both quickly assembled large fleets of hundreds of galleys, as this was a war which would

play itself out as much in the Mediterranean as on land. By the summer both sides were channelling their armies towards Greece, which like Caesar and Pompey’s showdown in 48 BC and the end of Brutus and Cassius’s revolt at Phillipi in 42 BC would act as the theatre in which yet another civil conflict of the Late Roman Republic would play out. Octavian and Mark Anthony’s forces would finally clash at sea near the Roman colony of Actium in north-western Greece in 31 BC. This was at the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, approximately 50 kilometres south of the

southern tip of the island of Corfu. Anthony had begun assembling his land and sea forces here in the summer of 31 BC in preparation for a planned strike against mainland Italy. Octavian responded by concentrating his forces on the Greek mainland opposite Corfu to the north of Actium. Here by the late summer Octavian was beginning to gain the upper hand as his strength relative to Anthony’s grew and Anthony became increasingly surrounded on the mainland. Then, as the days went by, desertion and disease began decimating his forces. As a result on the 2nd of September 31 BC

he attempted to break out from the Ambracian Gulf with slightly over 300 ships and perhaps as many as 25,000 infantry and cavalry on board. Octavian’s forces of roughly 400 galleys under the overall command of Marcus Agrippa had lined up in the waters around the exit from the Gulf as Anthony’s fleet sailed passed Actium to try to break out into the wider Mediterranean. The Battle of Actium which followed would be the decisive conflict of the civil war. Octavian’s fleet was numerically superior, but his ships of an Italian build were smaller than the larger galleys of Anthony’s

eastern fleet. However, even this seeming advantage for Anthony was diluted by the fact that Octavians’s ships proved more agile and could stay out of range of fire from Anthony’s vessels in the hours that followed. However, what possibly sealed his fate at Actium was that his ships became caught in ‘dead water’ while trying to break out of the Ambracian Gulf, a marine phenomenon whereby ships can only move at a fraction of their normal speed due to being caught in highly saline water. This, or perhaps a run of bad winds, stranded many of Anthony’s ships for long

enough that Octavian’s galleys were able to come close enough to start many fires on the decks of Anthony’s own galleys. This, combined with a breakdown in communication between the different parts of Anthony’s fleet, saw his fleet almost completely destroyed in the hours that followed. As night-time descended near Actium Mark Anthony’s hopes of defeating Octavian were ablaze across the waters outside the Ambracian Gulf. In the aftermath of Actium Anthony managed to escape back to Egypt. Octavian and Marcus Agrippa pursued him, and Anthony eventually committed suicide by falling on his own sword on the 1st of August

30 BC after another defeat at Alexandria. This brought the latest civil war, the final civil war of the Roman Republic, to an end. Cleopatra followed her lover’s example nine days later and killed herself by drinking poison, not as legend would have it through the bite of an asp. And Octavian was not inclined to show mercy to those who had survived. Both Caesarion, Cleopatra’s son by Julius Caesar, and Marcus Antonius Antyllus, Mark Anthony’s son by his earlier wife, Fulvia, were executed. The two had been born within weeks of each other in 47 BC and were consequently

in their late teens in 30 BC. Octavian had not been much older himself when Caesar was assassinated and he began his political and military ascent. Unwilling to take any risks that the pair would one day pose a threat to him he had them killed. Egypt, which had been a client state of Rome’s up until 30 BC was formally annexed to become the latest province of the Roman Republic. Like Caesar before him, Octavian did not move to immediately establish himself as Emperor of Rome, although he was now unrivalled in the same way Caesar had been between

48 BC and 44 BC. Unwilling to make the mistake his great uncle had made of claiming dictatorial powers and never relinquishing them or asking the Senate’s consent, he instead began slowly changing his own constitutional position in the months and years following the end of the civil war in 30 BC. Firstly, after returning to Rome he had himself and Marcus Agrippa made consuls for the year and he would hold the title every year down to the late 20s BC. In tandem Octavian tightened his grip on the military and also began diverting the Republic’s wealth into his

own coffers in ways which allowed him to bestow enormous amounts of financial patronage. Then he reached an agreement with the Senate that he would divide control over the Republic’s provinces between them, whereby Octavian and his magistrates administered some and the Senate others. And by this means he created the idea that he was ruling with the consent of the Senate and the old aristocracy, instead of bludgeoning it into obedience as Caesar had attempted. For all that these changes magnified Octavian’s position in the aftermath of his victory over Anthony, it was not until 27 BC that the

real change in the constitutional status of the Republic and his position within it was transformed. In January of that year the Senate granted Octavian two new titles. The first of these was that of ‘Princeps’, meaning first or the foremost within a group. The new title signified that Octavian was now the first citizen of Rome. The other title which was bestowed was that of Augustus, roughly meaning ‘Illustrious One’ as a term of reverence. Octavian now took the latter along with his great uncle’s cognomen as his new name. Henceforth he would be known as Caesar Augustus, while

he styled himself as ‘Imperator’, a term which in Latin effectively means ‘Commander’, but the meaning of which today is emperor or ruler, based largely on the knowledge that the imperators who ruled after Augustus were emperors of a Roman Empire. And these developments in January of 27 BC are consequently generally interpreted as the point at which the Roman Republic came to an end and the date from which we can speak of the Roman Empire, one which would last for nearly exactly 500 years thereafter. Having established himself in a position of secure and supreme authority in Rome,

Augustus soon set about expanding the Empire’s borders. Rome was a society, whether it was ruled as a Republic or as an Empire, which viewed expansion as a natural thing for it to do at all times. In the early years of Augustus’s rule, this came quite easily. Egypt had been annexed as part of the end of the civil war. The Kingdom of Galatia in central Turkey was also converted into a Roman province in 25 BC when its ruler, Amyntas, was killed. In the years that followed that, Augustus succeeded in crushing the independent tribes of northern Hispania,

which had resisted Roman rule for two centuries. The final conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by 19 BC was especially beneficial as huge gold deposits were soon discovered there, leading to a massive financial windfall for both Augustus and the wider Roman aristocracy. In tandem, Augustus tightened Roman control over the client kingdoms of the near east such as the Herodian kingdom of Judea by the end of the 20s BC. A diplomatic success was also secured in 20 BC when an agreement was reached with the Parthian Empire to return the battle standards of the Roman legions which had

been lost at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC in which Crassus, Julius Caesar’s associate in the First Triumvirate had perished. Yet it was not all plain sailing during these years. In the spring of 23 BC Augustus became seriously ill and many believed he was on his deathbed. Therefore he made provisions at this time for a division of power upon his death whereby Marcus Agrippa would succeed him militarily and his nephew Marcus Claudius Marcellus would be groomed to succeed him politically in the long run. Although he recovered from the illness, the entire episode made Augustus

acutely conscious of the necessity for a clearer constitutional arrangement and during the course of 23 BC he agreed with the Senate that henceforth he would not appoint himself as consul, but would be granted the office of tribune for life, with the powers of a Roman censor combined with this. In this way he placated the Senate by giving back the office of consul, but retained great control over the magistracy by the creation of an entirely new office under the name of tribune. And while these new arrangements did incite some unrest, most notably a shadowy conspiracy which

was launched by one Fannius Caepio in 21 BC, these threats were easily seen off and Augustus continued to solidify his rule into the 10s BC. Augustus’s reign saw many innovations in terms of how Roman society was governed and managed. The century or so prior to his seizure of power had seen the Roman state expand dramatically, but necessary social reforms had been neglected as the Republic struggled through successive civil wars. In particular there were major issues in the Eternal City itself, which was suffering from fires, diseases, a crime problem and growing poverty. Augustus began addressing this

imbalance. In the city of Rome, the population of which had swelled to upwards of a million people by the first century AD he transformed the municipal government, instituting the first professional police force and fire service, in a city where violent assaults and accidental fires had become rampant. These ‘vigiles’ did much to make Rome a more hospitable place by the end of his reign. He also drastically reformed the way in which Rome and the Italian peninsula were administered, expanding the personal bodyguard he had established for himself early in his career, the Praetorian Guard, to become a

much larger unit whose loyalty was directly to the emperor, and which was charged with the protection of the capital and the Italian peninsula. In the wider empire Augustus, in conjunction with the Senate, established the system of administration which would last for much of the next two centuries. This divided the empire into senatorial provinces which the Senate administered and imperial provinces which were administered by magistrates appointed directly by the emperor. There were some exceptions to this rule. Egypt, which he had conquered following the Battle of Actium, was one of the richest provinces of the entire empire

and Augustus placed it under the administration of a prefect from the Roman equestrian class who was directly responsible to him. And he also introduced major reforms to the Roman tax base which increased the imperial revenues that were collected. This was a necessity, as for decades Rome had relied on extracting resources from conquered territories for much of its wealth. In introducing a proper taxation system of land and trade, Augustus was creating a more stable and secure source of revenue for the empire. Finally, in order to improve the overall administration of the empire, Augustus initiated a massive

road building system, and a system of relay stations complete with horses to deliver information at maximum speed to and from Rome. As a result King Louis XIV nearly 2,000 years later would not have been able to send a messenger from Paris to Rome any faster than Augustus could. The reign of Augustus is generally perceived as having been a golden age of Roman culture, particularly of Latin literature. The poet Horace published his Odes between 23 BC and 13 BC, while Ovid composed several renowned works such as the Metamorphoses, a narrative of combined Hellenic-Romano mythology, and his

Ars Amatoria, meaning ‘The Art of Love’, and the Fasti, a volume on the Roman calendar, all towards the latter end of Augustus’s reign. The historian Livy spent nearly thirty years during Augustus’s reign composing an enormous history of Rome from the foundation of the city down to Augustus’s reign entitled Ab Urbe Condita, meaning from ‘From the Founding of the City’. Yet it was Virgil, an Italian from near modern-day Mantua, who became the greatest of the Roman poets, his magnum opus, the Aeneid, providing a national epic of Rome’s mythical establishment by Aeneas, a refugee from the legendary

siege and fall of the city of Troy. Many of these poets were supported by Gaius Maecenas, one of Augustus’s right-hand men who acted as an unofficial minister of culture, and the emperor’s role in this flowering of Latin literature was considerable, although Augustus did exile Ovid to the city of Tomis beyond the empire’s borders in Romania in 8 AD under mysterious circumstances possibly related to the scandals created by his love poetry. The Augustan golden age extended beyond the written word. Rome’s first emperor left an indelible mark on the built environment of the city. He was responsible

for constructing numerous major monumental buildings in the centre of the city, notably the Forum of Augustus complete with a temple to Mars Ultor and the triumphal Arch of Augustus, while the Mausoleum of Augustus which he built shortly after the end of the civil war covered an area the size of several city streets along the banks of the River Tiber and became the resting place of the remains of all the Julio-Claudian emperors and many members of Augustus’s extended family. Other buildings, such as the Portico of Octavia, which was built in honour of the emperor’s sister, and

the Baths of Agrippa, the city’s first public baths, constructed by Augustus’s most trusted ally, Marcus Agrippa, were built either by or on behalf of the emperor’s family and friends. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given all this building work, the foremost work on Roman architecture, De Architectura, was written by the engineer and architect Vitruvius during the first decade of Augustus’s reign. It was still being used as a major work in the field as late as the eighteenth century and Vitruvius’s writings were used in such famous buildings as the dome which Filippo Brunelleschi built on top of the Cathedral of

Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence in the fifteenth century. This Augustan golden age of culture, of course, often had a political edge to it. When figures such as Maecenas patronised poets such as Virgil to write about the greatness of Rome and Augustus patronised the building of grand monuments throughout the Eternal City they were also creating propaganda for the imperial regime. Coins and other mediums to disseminate Augustus’s image throughout the Roman Empire were used to the same end, often advertising to Rome’s subjects in the most far away regions of the empire exactly who their new ruler

was. In addition Augustus continued to add further elements to his powers. Although he had ceased to hold the office of consul on an annual basis, in 19 BC the Senate granted him the right to wear the insignia of a consul in public, while in the Senate itself he sat in a symbolic position henceforth between the two consuls for that year. Then in 12 BC when the former triumvir Lepidus finally died he acquired his title of Pontifex Maximus, making Augustus the senior religious officer in Rome. Finally, in February of 2 BC the Senate granted Augustus the

title of pater patriae, meaning the ‘father of the country’. It was the culmination of three decades of concentrating power in his hands. Throughout his reign there continued to be widespread speculation as to who, if anyone, would succeed Augustus in the unique position he had carved out for himself within the Roman state. Augustus had married three times. His first two marriages were brief affairs. The first to Claudia between 42 BC and 40 BC was a political marriage designed to shore up alliances during the politically turbulent years following Caesar’s assassination. The second to Scribonia followed immediately after

his divorce from Claudia, but similarly it only lasted two years down to 38 BC. However, this particular union did result in Augustus’s only biological child, a daughter named Julia. Augustus, who was still Octavian at that time, divorced Scribonia the very day that she gave birth to Julia. The grounds were that she had committed adultery, but this may have simply been a convenient excuse as Octavian had met and fallen for Livia Drusilla at this time. Livia was married herself, to Tiberius Claudius Nero, a Roman senator with whom she had two children. She quickly obtained a divorce

herself and she and Octavian were wed in 37 BC. They would be happily married for the next fifty years down to Augustus’s death, but the marriage never produced any children, though the reasons are unclear as both Livia and Augustus had children from their previous marriages. Had Augustus’s marriage to Livia resulted in a son, the issue of the succession might have been clearer, though this is by no means certain as Roman succession practices often involved the adoption of an heir who was considered a worthy successor. From the 20s BC onwards Augustus considered many possible heirs. Early

on his preference clearly seemed to be for Marcus Agrippa, his most trusted general and ally. Agrippa was periodically placed in charge of affairs in the east of the empire and Augustus betrothed his daughter Julia to him, a union which resulted in five children. However, Agrippa had been born in 63 BC, the same year as Octavian, and he died in 12 BC long before the emperor. Thereafter Augustus began grooming his two grandchildren from Agrippa and Julia’s marriage, Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar, as potential heirs. Unfortunately, though, the two young men both died under relatively mysterious circumstances

within 18 months of each other between the autumn of 2 AD and the spring of 4 AD. Suspicions abounded that the Empress Livia had them poisoned to ensure the succession of her surviving son from her first marriage, Tiberius. His route to the imperial titles seemed assured from 6 AD onwards when Julia and Marcus Agrippa’s only living son and Augustus’s only surviving biological grandson, Agrippa Postumus, was banished from the empire for his excessively brutal and violent conduct. In addition to concerns about the succession, the final years of Augustus’s reign saw a shifting situation with regard to

the empire’s borders or what we might call its foreign policy. As we have seen, the earlier years of Augustus’s reign saw the consolidation of the empire’s borders in regions such as the Iberian Peninsula, the full conquest of which was finally completed in the early 10s BC. The second half of his reign saw an effort to consolidate the land corridor between the western and eastern parts of the empire in Europe by conquering the regions then known as Pannonia, Illyria and Moesia, approximating with Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo and parts of Serbia today. In doing so

the empire’s territories were extended into an unbroken chain from the Atlantic coast of Iberia all the way eastwards to Thrace in modern-day Turkey. A final revolt known as the Great Illyrian Revolt began here in 6 AD amongst the native tribes, but once this was crushed in 9 AD all of the western Balkans was brought firmly under Roman rule. Other consolidations involved acquiring greater control over Armenia in the east to shore up the eastern border, while the Herodian Kingdom of Judea, which had been a client state for decades, was formally annexed and made into the province

of Judea in 6 AD. Thereafter Augustus began a process of down-scaling the military preparedness of the empire and limiting the amount of future conquests which would be undertaken. To that end the number of legions, which had risen to over 50 as a result of the civil wars, was reduced to a standing amount of 28. The one region where Augustus continued to adopt an aggressive foreign policy stance was in Germania. His great uncle had conquered the vast expanse of Gaul in less than ten years in the 50s BC and Augustus was determined to emulate him by

extending Roman control eastward over the tribes of Germania. Operating out of a major settlement which was being established at Colonia, the Roman town which would eventually grow into the modern city of Cologne, the Roman legions, led by Augustus’s great nephew, Germanicus Julius Caesar, began foraying beyond the River Rhine into Central and Eastern Germany in the late first century BC. The advance was so swift at this time that by 7 BC Roman arms had extended as far as the River Elbe in the east of the region and a new province called Germania Antiqua was established out

of these lands. However, this seemingly comfortable conquest of such a broad expanse of land was too good to be true. In secret, the Germanic tribes of the region were plotting to expel the Romans from their lands and in 9 AD when the Roman general, Publius Quinctilius Varus, led three legions into the region around Saxony they were betrayed by a Germanic ally, Arminius, and ambushed. Virtually the entire three legions, some 15,000 men, were killed at what has become known as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Henceforth plans to conquer Germania were abandoned and the River Rhine

was established as the northern boundary of the empire. Caesar Augustus died in the year 14 AD, on the 19th of August, a month which was named after him, after July had been named after his great uncle, Julius Caesar. He was nearing his eightieth year and was in poor health and we can probably discount as spurious rumours that Livia poisoned him to speed up the succession of her son Tiberius. It was this step-son of the emperor who would succeed him, not because he had shown himself to be a particularly worthy or accomplished individual, but because he

had simply outlasted all of his rivals for the position. Augustus’s advice to him prior to his death had been to not expand the empire any further. But instead to secure its existing borders as these made geographic sense, being bounded on the south by the Sahara Desert, on the west and north by the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea and on the east by the River Rhine and River Danube in Europe. Although this advice was not precisely followed by Augustus’s successors, it was to a sufficient enough extent that it brought peace to the empire for much of

the next two centuries. This is often referred to as the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, under which Rome’s 50 to 70 million subjects lived through a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity. It was a far cry from the chaos which characterised the Roman Republic when Octavian was born into it. In the decades which followed it became clear how difficult Augustus’s job as first emperor of Rome had been. His reign was followed by several much poorer ones. His direct successor, Tiberius, is generally understood to have been an aloof poor ruler who spent years absent from Rome

and who relied on unscrupulous middlemen such as the soldier Sejanus to rule on his behalf. He was succeeded by Caligula in 37 BC, a great-grandson of Augustus’s who is generally deemed to have been a mad tyrant and a sexual deviant. When his short reign ended in 41 BC another member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Tiberius Claudius Caesar, became Emperor Claudius. Although he was generally depicted as a weak ruler by Roman historians, Claudius was actually the most successful of Augustus’s near successors, taking an interest in reforming the legal system and initiating a major building programme throughout the

empire, and the negative depiction of him was most likely on account of his being slightly disabled and having a limp, and thus not being seen as a martial figure who could wage war in the Roman tradition. The last Julio-Claudian Emperor Nero is typically understood to have been a borderline lunatic who burned down Rome and whose reign eventually ended in civil war and the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in 68 BC. Thus, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero, through their failings, did much to highlight exactly how great Augustus’s accomplishment had been in bringing stability to the Roman state.

Caesar Augustus, the man who became first citizen of Rome, but who began his political ascent as Octavian when he was little more than a boy, is a character who has widely divided opinions in the 2,000 years since he ruled as Rome’s first emperor. It could be argued, and has been argued, that he brought the Roman Republic to an end and established a system which destroyed the empire’s more democratic institutions. Such a view was articulated by subsequent generations of Roman historians, such as the late first century AD senator and writer, Tacitus, who claimed that Augustus had

subverted the will of the people and made them slaves. In this interpretation the man who was granted the title of ‘the Illustrious One’ by the Roman Senate was nothing more than a power hungry tyrant, the last man left standing after decades of civil war which tore the Republic apart. Moreover, his reign was dominated by warfare, from the near constant turmoil of the Second Triumvirate to the civil war with Mark Anthony through successive wars in the Middle East and then in Germania. Tens of thousands, and quite possibly hundreds of thousands, of people died as a result

of the conflicts he engaged in or directly initiated. Yet there is another completely opposite way of interpreting Augustus. After several decades of internal strife within the Roman Republic he finally brought the constant civil wars between opposing generals to an end and inaugurated a period of renewed stability. This allowed for the initiation of wide-ranging social reforms and the reorganisation of the empire, while the more settled environment in Rome led to the flowering of arguably the greatest period of Roman culture that was seen in its thousand year history. Moreover, his foreign policy was practical in so far

as he tried to consolidate Rome’s control over the regions it was a major player in already and then created new borders along easily defensible geographic areas such as the River Rhine in Germania. In doing so, he effectively consolidated the Empire after a century and a half of somewhat chaotic expansion since the middle of the second century BC. In doing all of this he bequeathed to his successors a much more stable situation than Rome faced in the days of Julius Caesar and when a line of generally competent emperors arrived in the second century AD the Roman

Empire enjoyed a period of unprecedented peace, stability and prosperity. But perhaps ultimately he was both of these things simultaneously, both the ruthless and power-hungry man who ended the Roman Republic and made himself ruler of an empire, and the individual who brought stability to a withered Republic which was dying long before he consigned it to history. What do you think of Caesar Augustus? Was he a great emperor who finally brought peace to Rome after decades of civil war or was he a power-hungry tyrant? Please let us know in the comment section, and in the meantime, thank

you very much for watching.