Rise of Augustus
Octavian, later known to history as Augustus, marched eight legions into Rome on the 19th of August 43 BC. He was nineteen years old and held no official standing. He became Rome's youngest consul that day, his soldiers stationed on the Campus Martius while the vote was held. Seventeen years later, the Roman Senate would formally bestow that name on him, ending the Republic and beginning the Roman Empire. The path between those two moments ran through assassination, a contested inheritance, and a formal three-man dictatorship. It ended at a naval battle on the western coast of Greece. Julius Caesar, murdered on the 15th of March 44 BC, left his great-nephew three-quarters of his estate. He also left him the right to use his name. That claim was legally questionable. It was also politically devastating to every rival who faced it.
Octavian was studying and undergoing military training in Apollonia, Illyria, when Caesar was killed. He consulted with Caesar's loyal army officers in Macedonia and decided to sail to Italy. His goal was to determine whether any political future remained for him. Caesar had no surviving legitimate children under Roman law. His daughter Julia had died in 54 BC. His son by Cleopatra, Caesarion, was not recognized by Roman law and was not mentioned in his will.
After landing at Lupiae near Brundisium in southern Italy, Octavian received a copy of the will. It made him heir to three-quarters of Caesar's estate. Quintus Pedius and Lucius Pinarius, likely children of Caesar's elder sister, received the rest. The will also entitled him to take up Caesar's name. His stepfather Philippus advised him to reject the inheritance and live quietly. His mother Atia chose not to intervene. On the 8th of May 44 BC, Octavian accepted.
He appeared before the urban praetor and declared himself Caesar's adopted son. Roman law did not straightforwardly support a testamentary adoption of this kind. The claim was legally spurious, as ancient sources acknowledge. Even so, Octavian styled himself Gaius Julius Caesar and avoided using the Octavianus suffix. He wanted to appear as Caesar's true son rather than a renamed great-nephew. Cicero and his stepfather Philippus still referred to him as Octavianus. Historians follow the same convention through 27 BC to avoid confusion with the dead dictator.
Caesar had pre-positioned 700 million sesterces at Brundisium as the staging fund for a planned Parthian war. Octavian demanded a portion. He also seized, without official permission, a tribute from Rome's province of Asia that was traveling toward Italy. A later senatorial investigation into the missing funds took no action against him. He had already used the money to raise troops against Mark Antony, who was at that point the Senate's declared enemy. By June 44 BC, Octavian had assembled 3,000 veteran soldiers and paid each a bonus of 500 denarii, more than a legionary earned over two full years of service.
Octavian arrived in Rome on the 6th of May 44 BC and found consul Mark Antony managing an uneasy truce between Caesar's faction and his assassins. A general amnesty had been granted to the killers on the 17th of March, on the condition that they respect the laws and offices Caesar had established. Antony's inflammatory funeral eulogy for Caesar soon drove most of the assassins from the city.
Antony refused to release the 300 sesterces Caesar's will had promised to every member of Rome's urban poor. He blocked the curiate assembly from hearing Octavian's petition to legitimize his adoption. He blocked Caesar's golden throne from display at public games in April and again in June. When a comet appeared in July during games honoring Caesar and was widely read as a sign of his divine status, Antony refused to allow formal deification proceedings.
Octavian covered half the promised cash payout to Rome's urban poor during Caesar's victory games. His own popularity rose as Antony's fell. Senators who feared Antony as a threat to republican order began to see Octavian as a useful counterweight. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Rome's foremost senator, became his advocate. In September 44 BC, Cicero launched a series of speeches portraying Antony as an enemy of the Republic. When Antony mocked Octavian's humble origins and his use of Caesar's name, Cicero declared in the Senate that the young man had shown "no more brilliant example of traditional piety among our youth."
At Cicero's urging, the Senate inducted Octavian as senator on the 1st of January 43 BC. He was given the right to vote alongside former consuls and to stand for public office younger than the law normally allowed. He was also granted imperium pro praetore, giving legal standing to his private army. The Senate then sent him with the consuls Hirtius and Pansa to relieve the siege of Mutina in Cisalpine Gaul. Antony had besieged Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus there after Decimus refused to yield the province. Octavian assumed the fasces on the 7th of January 43 BC, a date he would later commemorate as the formal start of his public career.
Antony's forces were beaten at the battles of Forum Gallorum on the 14th of April and Mutina on the 21st of April. Antony retreated north. Both consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, died in the fighting. Octavian found himself in sole command of their armies. The victories earned him his first acclamation as imperator, a title reserved for victorious commanders.
The Senate heaped more honors on Decimus Brutus than on Octavian and moved to transfer command of the consular legions to Decimus. Octavian refused. In July, centurions acting for him entered Rome and demanded the vacant consulship. When the Senate declined, Quintus Pedius, a fellow heir from Caesar's will who became Octavian's co-consul once the election was forced, passed legislation creating a special tribunal. That body tried, convicted, and exiled Caesar's assassins and their associates, completing the business in a single day with Octavian presiding as president of the court.
In October 43 BC, near the town of Bononia, Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus sketched the terms of a formal three-man rule. Their agreement was given legal force by the lex Titia, passed by tribune Publius Titius on the 27th of November. Unlike the informal arrangement between Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus before it, this was an official office. It granted all three men consular power, the right to appoint magistrates, and authority over the provinces not yet under the control of Caesar's assassins in the east. The agreement was ratified for five years.
To bind the alliance, Octavian broke his engagement to Servilia, daughter of Publius Servilius Isauricus, and became engaged instead to Claudia, stepdaughter of Antony. He also yielded the consulship to Antony's political ally Publius Ventidius for the remainder of 43 BC. Allied consuls for the years 42, 41, and 40 BC were designated at this same meeting.
Roughly 300 men, divided nearly evenly between senators and equestrians, were declared outlaws in the proscriptions that immediately followed. Thousands more had their property seized. To fund the coming war against Caesar's assassins, the triumvirs reinstated property taxes that had been suspended since 167 BC. They also created new levies on slaves and imposed forced wealth assessments on rich women. The last was partially rolled back after a public protest in Rome.
Velleius Paterculus, Cassius Dio, Appian, Suetonius, and Plutarch each offer a different account of who bore the most responsibility. Velleius blamed Lepidus and Antony. Dio defended Octavian as trying to spare as many as possible. Appian rejected that defense, insisting Octavian shared equally in the purge. Suetonius described him as reluctant at first but ultimately more vigorous than either partner. Plutarch called it a ruthless swapping of friends and family members. Antony proscribed his maternal uncle Lucius Julius Caesar, who had served as consul in 64 BC. Lepidus proscribed his brother Paullus. Octavian permitted the proscription of Cicero.
Historian Patricia Southern writes that the "unpalatable truth" is that Octavian had a "vested interest" in removing Cicero. She adds that Cicero "would perhaps in turn have eliminated Octavian if it had been necessary." Cicero had been Octavian's sponsor and Senate champion barely months before. His death by the end of 43 BC cleared the way for the triumvirate's war against Caesar's assassins, which was about to be fought at Philippi.
Julius Caesar was recognized posthumously as a state divinity on the 1st of January 42 BC, with Lepidus serving as consul. Octavian built on this by emphasizing his new title: divi filius, son of the divine. He and Antony then sent twenty-eight legions to Greece to confront the republican armies of Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, who had built their power base in the eastern provinces.
Two battles were fought at Philippi in Macedonia in October 42 BC. The Caesarian side won both. Brutus and Cassius each committed suicide. Antony bore the primary military credit and used it openly to belittle Octavian, calling him a coward for handing direct command to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Octavian had been bedridden with illness during the first battle and removed himself from command of the camp on his doctor's advice. He captured Brutus's camp during the second engagement. Historian Karl Galinsky argues Octavian sought to recover from the embarrassment by ordering the beheading of Brutus's corpse, though Adrian Goldsworthy notes it is unclear who actually gave that order. The remains were sent to Rome but lost in a storm at sea before arrival.
Lepidus was suspected by Octavian and Antony of colluding with Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey who had been granted naval command over all Mediterranean coastlines by the anti-Caesarian Senate. That grant had been ratified on the 20th of March 43 BC. Lepidus was left with the province of Africa. Antony took the East and Gallia Narbonensis from Lepidus. Octavian received Cisalpine Gaul combined with Italia, along with the Spanish provinces Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior that Lepidus was forced to relinquish.
As many as eighteen Roman towns were stripped to settle the tens of thousands of veterans promised land after Philippi. No government-owned land remained to distribute. Octavian chose to confiscate from civilians rather than alienate soldiers who could arm against him. Entire populations were driven out or partially evicted. Antony's Gallic provinces fell to Octavian shortly after the death of Antony's legate Quintus Fufius Calenus in 40 BC, extending his territory without resolving the political damage the land seizures had done.
Lucius Antonius, brother of Mark Antony, turned the resentment over the land seizures into a military campaign. Supported by Antony's wife Fulvia, he raised an army in Italy, briefly occupied Rome, and forced Lepidus and his two legions to flee the city. The Roman army's dependence on the triumvirs for pay eventually destroyed the rebellion. Octavian cornered Lucius and his supporters at Perusia and forced their surrender in February 40 BC.
Lucius was spared because of his kinship with Antony. Fulvia fled to Sicyon in Greece and died there shortly afterward. Blame for the revolt was placed on her rather than on Lucius. On the 15th of March 40 BC, the anniversary of Julius Caesar's assassination, Octavian had 300 senators and equestrians executed for having sided with Lucius. Perusia was pillaged and burned. The Augustan poet Sextus Propertius was among those who condemned the episode publicly.
Sextus Pompeius posed a different threat by using control of the sea to block grain shipments to Italy. His own son commanded the naval forces in the effort. Pompeius styled himself Neptuni filius, son of Neptune. In early 39 BC, food shortages caused riots in Rome and a mob attacked both Octavian and Antony in the streets. Antony's forces rescued Octavian and dispersed the crowd. The Pact of Misenum in 39 BC temporarily ended the blockade. Octavian granted Pompeius control of Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, and the Peloponnese, along with a future consulship and a place in the college of augurs.
The arrangement collapsed when Antony refused to relinquish the Peloponnese and Pompeius renewed his blockade. Agrippa was assigned to solve the problem permanently. He built the Portus Julius, an artificial harbor near Cumae, by connecting the Lucrinus and Avernus lakes. He trained and equipped a new fleet there. Pompeius's fleet fled from Agrippa at Mylae in August 36 BC. On the 3rd of September, Agrippa destroyed it at the naval battle of Naulochus. Sextus fled east with his remaining forces. He was captured and executed in Miletus in 35 BC.
As Lepidus and Octavian accepted the surrender of Pompeius's troops in Sicily, Lepidus attempted to claim the island for himself. His soldiers deserted him, worn down by war and drawn by Octavian's promises of money. Lepidus surrendered. He kept the office of pontifex maximus but was stripped from the triumvirate and exiled to a villa at Cape Circei in Italy. Octavian settled his discharged soldiers outside Italy, returned 30,000 runaway slaves to their former owners, and secured from the Senate tribunician immunity for himself, his wife Livia, and his sister Octavia. With Lepidus in exile and Sextus dead, the struggle for sole power had narrowed to two men.
In 36 BC, Octavian announced publicly that the civil wars were ending and offered to step down as triumvir if Antony would do the same. Antony refused. The offer was calculated theater, designed to make Antony appear as the obstacle to peace and Octavian as the reluctant ruler.
Antony's campaign against Parthia in 36 BC ended in disaster. His forces suffered severe losses. The 2,000 legionaries Octavian sent, escorted by his wife Octavia, were nowhere near enough to restore his strength. Cleopatra, with the wealth of Ptolemaic Egypt, could provide what Octavian would not. In 35 BC, Antony sent Octavia back to Rome. Octavian turned the personal rejection into a propaganda effort, depicting Antony as a man who had abandoned a legitimate Roman wife in favor of a foreign queen.
The political confrontation reached a new intensity in 32 BC. The new consuls, Gaius Sosius and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, were Antony loyalists. On the 1st of January 32 BC, Sosius delivered a Senate speech denouncing Octavian. A measure he then brought forward, which historian Patricia Southern believes aimed at stripping Octavian of his now-expired triumviral powers, was vetoed by the tribune Nonius Balbus. Octavian responded by entering the Senate chambers with armed guards and delivering accusations against Antony and Sosius. A large portion of the senators and both consuls fled Rome and joined Antony.
Two defectors from Antony's side, Munatius Plancus and Marcus Titius, gave Octavian what he needed. He forced his way into the temple of the Vestal Virgins, seized Antony's secret will, and published it. The will proposed distributing Roman-conquered territories as kingdoms to Antony's children and requested burial next to Cleopatra in Alexandria. Patricia Southern identifies two distinct offenses in the document. From a Roman perspective, she writes, the most disgraceful clause was Antony's wish to be buried in Alexandria. From Octavian's personal perspective, the most damaging clause was Antony's naming of his children by Cleopatra as his heirs. Antony had also recognized Caesarion as the true heir to Julius Caesar, not Octavian. Southern states this "sealed Caesarion's death warrant, as far as Octavian was concerned."
In late 32 BC, the Senate declared war on Cleopatra's regime, not on Antony directly. Historian Duane W. Roller notes that the legal basis rested on Cleopatra arming a private Roman citizen, Antony, whose triumviral authority had technically lapsed at the end of 33 BC. Octavian had men of military age across the Republic swear personal loyalty oaths to him. In early 31 BC, Agrippa ferried troops across the Adriatic and cut off Antony and Cleopatra's supply lines in the Ionian Sea. Octavian landed at Toryne in Epirus, opposite the island of Corcyra, and marched south. Deserters from Antony's camp crossed to Octavian's side daily.
On the 2nd of September 31 BC, Antony's fleet moved through the bay of Actium along the Ambracian Gulf of western Greece. His goal was to break Agrippa's naval blockade. Cleopatra's ships withdrew early in the fighting and were followed by Antony. His remaining land forces surrendered to Octavian. After returning briefly to Italy to manage the absorbed legions, Octavian moved east: to Greece, then Syria, then Egypt. Client rulers who had sided with Antony defected to him, including Herod the Great of Judea, who met Octavian at Rhodes and helped supply his forces at Ptolemais in Phoenicia during the march toward Alexandria.
On the 1st of August 30 BC, Octavian's forces defeated the last resistance in Alexandria. Antony fell on his own sword. His soldiers carried him, still alive, to Cleopatra's monument, where he died. Cleopatra then met with Octavian, refused to be displayed in a Roman triumph, and took her own life by poisoning. The popular belief that she died from an asp bite is not supported by the ancient sources. Octavian ensured she was buried properly next to Antony in their tomb.
Octavian then acted on what the published will had made strategically necessary. He ordered Caesarion killed, following the counsel of the Greek philosopher Arius Didymus that the world had room for only one Caesar. Antony's older son Marcus Antonius Antyllus was also killed. Antony's younger son Iullus and his three children by Cleopatra were spared. After Octavia arranged the marriage of Cleopatra's daughter Cleopatra Selene II to Juba II of Numidia, Octavian later appointed this couple as co-rulers of Mauretania in 25 BC.
Egypt entered Roman control as something without precedent in the empire. Octavian governed it personally and forbade Roman senators from traveling there without his permission. He appointed Cornelius Gallus, an equestrian rather than a senator, to supervise its administration and harvest its enormous tax revenues. While in Alexandria in 30 BC, Octavian visited the tomb of Alexander the Great, the Macedonian conqueror he emulated through similarly styled artistic portraits. One ancient source records that he accidentally knocked off the nose of the mummified body. He became Rome's first pharaoh of Egypt, though he refused to participate in Egyptian coronation rites, declined to worship the Apis bull, and never returned to Egypt after 30 BC.
The conquest erased all of Octavian's personal debts from the civil wars. By 27 BC, a formal settlement with the Senate gave him control over half of Rome's provinces and the bulk of its armies. The Senate awarded him the title Augustus in exchange. Near the site of the decisive naval battle, he later founded a city called Nicopolis, meaning "victory city," where games were held every four years in his honor. He had been born Gaius Octavius in 63 BC, arrived in Rome with nothing but a dead man's name and three-quarters of his estate, and now held a title no Roman had ever held before.
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Common questions
Who was Octavian before he became the emperor Augustus?
Octavian was born Gaius Octavius in 63 BC, the great-nephew of Julius Caesar. After Caesar's assassination on the 15th of March 44 BC, he accepted Caesar's will, which made him heir to three-quarters of the estate and gave him the right to use Caesar's name. Historians call him Octavian during the years 44 to 27 BC to distinguish him from the dead dictator.
How was the Second Triumvirate formed and what powers did it hold?
The Second Triumvirate was created by the lex Titia, passed on the 27th of November 43 BC, establishing Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus as co-rulers with consular power, the right to appoint magistrates, and authority over Rome's western provinces. Unlike the informal arrangement between Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, it was a formal legal office ratified for five years.
What were the proscriptions carried out by the Second Triumvirate?
The proscriptions were a systematic outlawing and killing of political enemies begun by the triumvirs in late 43 BC. Roughly 300 senators and equestrians were declared outlaws and killed, with thousands more losing their property. Each triumvir sacrificed someone in his own circle: Octavian permitted the killing of Cicero, Antony proscribed his maternal uncle Lucius Julius Caesar, and Lepidus proscribed his brother Paullus.
What happened at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC?
The Battle of Actium was fought on the 2nd of September 31 BC in the bay of Actium along the Ambracian Gulf of western Greece. Octavian's fleet, commanded by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, defeated the combined naval forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra's ships withdrew early in the fighting, Antony followed, and his remaining land forces surrendered to Octavian.
How did Octavian use Antony's secret will to justify war?
In 32 BC, Octavian seized Antony's secret will from the temple of the Vestal Virgins and published its contents publicly. The will planned to distribute Roman-conquered territories as kingdoms to Antony's children by Cleopatra and requested burial next to Cleopatra in Alexandria. Octavian used the will to persuade the Senate and Roman public that Antony had abandoned Roman values in favor of a foreign queen.
How did Cleopatra die after Octavian conquered Egypt?
Cleopatra took her own life by poisoning after the fall of Alexandria on the 1st of August 30 BC, having met with Octavian and refused to be paraded in a Roman triumph. The ancient sources do not support the popular belief that she died from an asp bite. Octavian ensured she was buried next to Mark Antony in their tomb.
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3 references cited across the entry
- 1Lindsay (2009) p. 184–5, 186 n. 3Lindsay — 2009
- 2Common Legend Abbreviations On Roman CoinsDavid R. Sear
- 3Richardson (2012) p. 37Richardson — 2012