Augustus
On the 8th of May 44 BC, a teenager named Gaius Octavius accepted a dead man's will and, with it, the most dangerous inheritance in the Roman world. Julius Caesar, his great-uncle and Rome's dictator in perpetuity, had been stabbed to death on the Ides of March, the 15th. The will named the young man primary heir and demanded he take Caesar's own name. He was nineteen when he marched on Rome and became its youngest elected consul. He would die at seventy-five, having ruled from 27 BC until AD 14 as the first Roman emperor. Yet he never called himself king. He never wore a diadem. How does a man seize a republic while insisting he is restoring it? How does a sickly youth outlast Mark Antony, Cleopatra, and every assassin of his adoptive father? And why, on his deathbed at Nola, did he reportedly ask the watching world to applaud, as if his whole reign had been a play? The answers begin with a name he was not born with, and a fortune he was never meant to keep.
Seven hundred million sesterces sat stored at Brundisium, money Caesar had set aside for a war against the Parthians. The young heir demanded a portion of it the moment Caesar's soldiers welcomed him. He did not stop there. Without official permission, he seized the annual tribute owed by Rome's province of Asia and redirected it to Italy. By June he had gathered an army of 3,000 men. He paid each soldier 500 denarii, more than twice a year's wages.
Mark Antony, Caesar's surviving consul, tried to choke off the inheritance. He refused to hand over the money owed to the heir and blocked the assembly from confirming the adoption. So the young man spent his own funds instead, distributing Caesar's bequest of 300 sesterces to the urban plebs and combining it with his personal wealth. The move enhanced his popularity while damaging Antony's. Coins and inscriptions from these years still called him Gaius Caesar. By 38 BC he had swapped Gaius for imperator, the victory title meaning commander, signaling that the name itself was becoming a weapon.
Near Bononia in October 43 BC, three rivals met and divided the Roman world among themselves. Octavian, Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus formed a triumvirate, and on the 27th of November the lex Titia gave their pact legal force for five years. To bind the alliance, Octavian broke an engagement to Servilia and became engaged instead to Claudia, Antony's stepdaughter.
Proscription was the price the regime exacted first. The triumvirs declared roughly 300 men outlaws, split nearly evenly between senators and equestrians, and thousands more lost their property. Roman historians could never agree which of the three bore the most blame for the killings. They agreed the lists let all three erase political enemies and raise money for the war ahead. When the seized property proved insufficient, the triumvirs invented new taxes, including levies on slaves and assessments on wealthy women that were reduced only after the women of Rome staged a public protest.
The reckoning with the assassins came at Philippi in Macedonia in October 42 BC. Antony and Octavian led twenty-eight legions east, defeating Brutus and Cassius across two battles. Both men died by suicide. Octavian was bedridden during the first battle and, on his doctor's advice, removed himself from his own camp. Antony seized on this and branded him a coward for handing direct command to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. That handoff to Agrippa would soon decide everything.
On the 15th of March 40 BC, the anniversary of Caesar's assassination, Octavian had 300 senators and equestrians executed for siding with Antony's brother. The veteran land settlements he imposed had bred fury across Italy, and Lucius Antonius raised an army on Antony's behalf, even briefly taking Rome. Octavian crushed the revolt with a siege at Perusia in February 40 BC. The city burned, though no one could say who lit the fires.
Marriage was Octavian's other battlefield. He married Scribonia to seal a pact with the rebel general Sextus Pompey, then divorced her the very day she gave birth to his only surviving child, Julia. On that same day he married Livia Drusilla. Livia was still wed to Tiberius Claudius Nero and pregnant with his second child when the affair began. She bore that child, Drusus, months after divorcing Nero.
The sea decided the contest with Sextus. Antony lent 120 ships at Tarentum in mid-37 BC, and Agrippa built an artificial harbor, Portus Julius, to train a fleet. In 36 BC Octavian was shipwrecked off Sicily, but Agrippa won at Mylae in August and nearly annihilated Sextus at Naulochus in September. When Lepidus tried to claim Sicily for himself, Octavian bribed his soldiers away and forced the third triumvir into retirement, leaving him only the office of pontifex maximus.
On the 2nd of September 31 BC, Antony's fleet tried to break out of the Ambracian Gulf and fought the Battle of Actium. Cleopatra, the Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, withdrew her ships early, and Antony followed her. The propaganda war had set the stage. Octavian had stormed into the Senate after Antony's supporters fled, denounced his rival for handing Roman lands to Cleopatra and her children in the Donations of Alexandria, and read out Antony's will, which named Alexandria as the site of his tomb.
Mercy was rationed in the aftermath. On the 1st of August 30 BC, Octavian defeated Antony at Alexandria, and Antony died by suicide. Cleopatra refused to be paraded in a Roman triumph and took her own life with poison. Octavian ordered the death of Caesarion, Cleopatra's son by Julius Caesar, knowing the danger of a second heir to Caesar's name. He also had Antony's son Marcus Antonius Antyllus killed, yet spared their other children. He buried Cleopatra beside Antony in their tomb.
Egypt became his personal property. He forbade senators from even visiting and installed an equestrian governor, Cornelius Gallus, over its lucrative taxation. In Alexandria he visited the tomb of Alexander the Great, the conqueror he imitated in his own portraits. The conquest erased his debts from the civil wars and would soon free him to build something no Roman had dared to name.
On the 13th of January 27 BC, Octavian made a show of handing his provinces and armies back to the Senate. Three days later, on the 16th, the Senate begged him to resume control of the provinces it deemed chaotic, and he accepted a ten-year command, feigning reluctance. This was the first settlement. The provinces ceded to him, including Hispania, Gaul, Syria, and Egypt, held the majority of Rome's legions. The Senate kept five or six legions; he commanded twenty.
The revered title arrived on that same the 16th of January. The Senate granted him augustus, a name of religious rather than political weight, suggesting he now approached divinity. He rejected the alternative of Romulus, the legendary founder, because it reeked too strongly of monarchy. The Senate hung the civic crown above his door and awarded him a golden shield inscribed with valor, piety, clemency, and justice.
Illness forced the next compromise. In 23 BC a liver disease nearly killed him, and he handed his signet ring to Agrippa, not to his young nephew Marcellus, who had married his daughter Julia. His physician Antonius Musa pulled him through, and on the 1st of July 23 BC he gave up the consulship. The second settlement followed, granting him greater proconsular power across the whole empire and the powers of a tribune for life. He could now convene the Senate, veto its decisions, and speak first at any meeting. He held offices he had refused, and power he never officially claimed.
By AD 13, his troops had hailed him imperator twenty-one times. He annexed Egypt, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Raetia, expanded holdings in Africa, and completed the conquest of Hispania. His stepsons Tiberius and Drusus struck at the Pannonian and Germanic tribes from 12 BC, and Drusus reached the Elbe by 9 BC before dying from a fall off his horse. The poet Virgil, whom Augustus patronized, gave this expansionist hunger divine sanction in the Aeneid, where Jupiter promises Rome imperium sine fine, sovereignty without end.
Diplomacy spared him some wars. In 20 BC he negotiated with Phraates IV of Parthia for the return of the battle standards lost by Crassus at Carrhae, then turned that recovery into propaganda symbolizing Parthia's submission. The standards appear on the breastplate of the statue Augustus of Prima Porta. Far to the south, Queen Amanirenas of the Kingdom of Kush invaded Roman Egypt in 24 BC and sacked Aswan and Philae, and after years of fighting her diplomats negotiated a peace treaty with Augustus on the island of Samos.
Germania was the wound that would not close. At the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, Arminius of the Cherusci destroyed three entire legions under Publius Quinctilius Varus. Augustus sent Tiberius to pacify the Rhineland but advised against further conquest beyond the Rhine. His own Res Gestae merely claims he pacified Germania to the mouth of the Elbe, saying nothing of the legions he had lost.
On the 19th of August AD 14, Augustus died at Nola, the same town where his father had died. He was seventy-five, and the cause was natural, though both Tacitus and Cassius Dio claimed his wife Livia had poisoned him, perhaps with a fig. Most historians dismiss the story as an attempt to discredit her son Tiberius. His reported last words turned his life into theater: "Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit."
The titles outlived the man by centuries. The surname Caesar and the title augustus served Roman rulers for fourteen hundred years, and Caesar became the root of the German kaiser and the Russian czar. The Senate had given him pater patriae, father of the country, on the 5th of February 2 BC, and on the 17th of September AD 14 it declared him a god. His memoirs, the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, were inscribed in bronze before his mausoleum and copied across the empire, a record one historian called the queen of inscriptions.
He left Rome rebuilt and policed. He created the vigiles, a combined fire brigade and police force, and a standing army of 28 legions, roughly 170,000 soldiers, cut down from 60 legions at the end of the civil wars. He had also founded the Praetorian Guard in 27 BC. That guard, raised to protect one emperor, would one day decide who became the next.
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Common questions
Who was Augustus and why is he important in Roman history?
Augustus, born Gaius Octavius and also known as Octavian, was the founder of the Roman Empire and its first emperor, ruling from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He was the great-nephew and adopted heir of Julius Caesar, and his reign began the Pax Romana, an era largely free of armed conflict.
How did Augustus become the first Roman emperor?
Augustus rose to power after Julius Caesar named him primary heir in 44 BC, then formed the Second Triumvirate with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus in 43 BC. He defeated Caesar's assassins at Philippi in 42 BC, exiled Lepidus in 36 BC, and beat Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate granted him the title augustus.
What did the title Augustus mean?
The Senate granted Octavian the title augustus on the 16th of January 27 BC, a name meaning the revered that carried religious rather than political authority and suggested he approached divinity. He chose it over the alternative title Romulus, which was tied too strongly to monarchy. Future emperors inherited augustus as their main title.
How did Augustus die?
Augustus died on the 19th of August AD 14 at Nola, at age 75, from natural causes. Both Tacitus and Cassius Dio claimed his wife Livia poisoned him with a fig, but most historians dismiss this as a fabrication meant to discredit her son Tiberius. His reported last words were, "Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit."
What did Augustus do at the Battle of Actium?
At the Battle of Actium on the 2nd of September 31 BC, Augustus's forces under his commander Agrippa defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra off western Greece. Cleopatra withdrew her fleet early in the battle and Antony followed her, and their land forces later surrendered. The victory left Augustus as the sole ruler of the Roman world.
What institutions did Augustus create in Rome?
Augustus established a standing professional army fixed at 28 legions of about 170,000 soldiers, the Praetorian Guard in 27 BC, and the vigiles, a combined fire brigade and police force, in AD 6. He also reformed taxation and currency, built road networks with an official relay system, and created a military treasury, the aerarium militare, in AD 6.
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