Wednesday 7 May: So who is this Augustus guy, anyway? or, Dan writes way too much about his favorite historical figure

I’ve had some questions about Augustus. Who was he, why do I keep mentioning him, and why is so important, not just to Roman, but to Western and world history? I’ll give you a quick overview. I’m going to really simplify things.

According to tradition, myth, and a tiny bit of historical fact, Rome was founded on 21 April 753 BCE by Romulus and Remus, twin sons of the god Mars and a Vestal Virgin named Julia Rhea Silvia. Julia was a princess from the ruling family of a town called Alba Longa, and was supposedly descended from Aeneas, a Trojan who escaped the fall of Troy and led a band of refugees to Italy. His adventures are the topic of Virgil’s Aeneid, the great epic poem of Rome. Aeneas in turn was the son of a Trojan prince and the goddess Venus. So Romulus, the first king of Rome (after his whacked his brother Remus) was supposed to be descended from not only the old Trojan royal family, but from the god of war and the goddess of love as well. Remember this, we’ll come back to it.

Rome was a small city-state, one of many in Italy. Romulus was followed by six more mostly legendary kings. The last king, an Etruscan named Tarquinius Superbus, was driven out by the leading families of Rome (the patricians) in 510 BCE, and on 1 January 509, the Roman Republic was established. The Romans hated the title rex “king” and in place of a single ruler, elected two chief magistrates called consuls. Consuls were elected by all adult male Roman citizens (but your vote counted for more depending on your birth and your wealth), and had supreme civil and military power. The Senate, which dated back to the kings, was composed of the heads of the noblest Roman families (senator means “elder” in Latin). The Republic had a complex system of citizen assemblies, voting, and lesser magistrates.

Over the next five centuries, the Roman Republic fought two constant struggles. Externally, it conquered first central Italy, then the entire peninsula, then Sicily, southern Gaul (now France), Spain, and began to expand south and east. The Republic waged the three famous Punic Wars against Carthage, a powerful trading state in Africa (modern Lybia). Eventually, Rome beat Carthage, and added most of northern Africa, except Egypt, to their territories. The Republic also fought and eventually conquered the Hellenistic kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean, the successor states to Alexander the Great’s empire. They also fought the Germanic, Gaulic, and Celtic “barbarians” in northern and western Europe. By the first century BCE, the Republic ruled most of the Mediterranean world and western Europe.

Meanwhile, an internal struggle was also going on. The oldest families, the patricians, tried to keep membership in the Senate, the consulships, the state priesthoods, and other offices for themselves. The plebians (everyone else) wanted a share in politics, and after a lot of internal struggle, legislation, and infighting, the plebians were admitted to participation in these as well (as long as they were rich plebians).

By the year 100 BCE, the year of Julius Caesar’s birth, the Roman Republic was the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful force in the known world. However, it was being torn apart internally by power struggles among the ruling classes. The legions came to owe allegiance to their generals and not to the Republic. Marius, Sulla, and Pompey were all powerful civil and military leaders who fought for supremacy and further tore apart the Republic. Finally, Julius Caesar came to power. The Julius family was one of the oldest in Rome, and claimed to be descended from Romulus, Mars, Rhea Silvia, Aeneas, and Venus (I told you to remember them!). Caesar had conquered all of Gaul for the Republic, chased his rival Pompey to Egypt where Pompey was killed, dallied there with Queen Cleopatra, who bore him a son named Caesarion (“Little Caesar” in Greek), and proceeded to put the state in order. Caesar was proclaimed dictator for life, and a group of senators were afraid that he was going to make himself rex, king, which was anathema to the Republic. Led by Brutus, a descendant of the original founder of the Republic five hundred years earlier, they assassinated Caesar at a meeting of the Senate.

Caesar was succeeded by two heirs. His political heir was Marcus Antonius, Marc Antony, who had been a long-time military and political ally. Caesar also had a family heir, his great nephew Gaius Octavius. Caesar had one child, a daughter who died young. Caesar also had a sister Julia, who had a daughter Atia. Atia had two children, a daughter Octavia, and a son, Gaius Octavius. Caesar took an interest in Ocativius’ upbringing, made him a state priest at an early age (a great honor one so young), and was planning on taking him along on his next military campaign. When Caesar was assassinated, Octavius was 19. Caesar’s will was read in the Senate, and in it, he adopted Octavius as his son and heir. Following Roman custom, the boy changed his name to his new father’s, with his previous family name added as an adjective: Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. During this period, historians usually call him Octavian.
Well, there was no love lost between Caesar’s, Antony and Octavian. They did unite long enough to fight and beat the forces of Caesar’s assassins, who were all killed or committed suicide. Antony and Octavian then turned on each other. They reached an uneasy peace for a while, and tried to forge an alliance by Antony marrying Octavian’ sister Octavia. It didn’t last. Antony went east to run the Roman provinces there, and began his own affair with Cleopatra, by whom he had four children. This was the last straw for Octavian. He began one of the most famous and well-planned propaganda campaigns in history, and turned public sentiment against Antony and Cleopatra. In 31 BCE, Octavian’s forces, under the command of his right-hand man and childhood friend Marcus Agrippa, defeated Antony and Cleopatra’s fleet at the great naval battle of Actium, off the coast of Greece. Antony and Cleo ran back to Egypt, and Octavian followed them. The beaten pair finally committed suicide, Octavian declared himself ruler of Egypt and made Egypt his personal estate, and finally made his way back to Rome.

Octavian spent the next couple of years putting the Republic in order, establishing peace through most of the Roman territories, and putting an end to a century of civil war. The Senate gave him full control of the Republic’s civil and military affairs. On 13 January 27 BCE, at the age of 35, Octavian appeared before the Senate, declared that the Republic had been restored, and in a carefully staged move, he offered to abdicate all of his powers. The Senate adjourned for three days. On 16 January, far from accepting Octavian’s resignation, the Roman Senate proclaimed him the first emperor, giving him the title Augustus (which means majestic, venerable, consecrated, worthy of worship). He ruled another forty years, and died in 14 CE/AD. His title Augustus was adopted by all later Roman emperors, by the medieval rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and the later German and Austrian empires, by the Byzantine emperors, and by the czars of Russia.

Augustus established a complex, subtle, and flexible system of government for the Roman Empire, which lasted another five hundred years. His political system was able to keep the huge empire running despite the fact that several of its later rulers were lazy, crazy, degenerate, perverted, incompetent, or downright insane (Caligula, Augustus’ great-grandson and the third emperor, comes immediately to mind). A great patron of the arts and of literature, Augustus boasted that he “found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.” He financially supported of some of the greatest poets of all time, including Virgil and Horace, and the Augustan Age is called the Golden Age of Latin literature. During his lifetime, he implored people not to worship him as a divinity. At his funeral, men said that they saw Augustus’ soul ascend from the smoke of the funeral pyre into heaven, and the Senate proclaimed him a god. Temples to the Divine Augustus were built throughout the Empire, and it is estimated that there were over 60,000 statues of him throughout the Roman world.

Augustus has always been a controversial figure. Was he a sincere restorer of order, a cynical politician, a subtly manipulative tyrant, or a combination of these? There are many ancient and modern sources on Augustus. Ask me for a recommendation.