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Augustus Caesar was born as Gaius Octavius in 63 BCE. His father had been governor of Maceonia; his mother was Julius Caesar’s (100–44 BCE) niece. The young Gaius became Caesar’s protege, adopted son and heir, and his eventual successor. The newly named Augustus Caesar was deemed a ruthless leader but never a tyrant. He instituted reforms that brought prosperity and peace to the Roman Empire. He supported a building program in Rome that turned a city of brick, as he proudly declared, into a city of marble. He reigned for forty-four years and is considered one of history’s most successful rulers.
Julius Caesar had been training Octavius, an astute and calculating soldier even in his teens, to be one of his major commanders; when Caesar was murdered in Rome on 15 March 44 BCE, the eighteen-year-old Octavius, who was commanding troops in Dalmatia, immediately returned to Rome. There he reluctantly joined forces with Mark Antony, Caesar’s trusted friend, considered by many to be Caesar’s obvious heir. But Octavius garnered influence with his position as Caesar’s adopted son, and in 43 BCE he joined with Antony and (Marcus) Aemilius Lepidus (d. 12 or 13 BCE) in the Second Triumvirate. They declared Julius Caesar a god, eliminated several thousand enemies in various battles and coups, and in 42 BCE defeated the primary murderers of Caesar— Marcus Junius Brutus (85–42 BCE) and Gaius Cassius Longinus (d. 42 BCE)—at Philippi in Macedonia.
By 36 BCE the Triumvirate was falling apart. Lepidus withdrew, and Octavius used Antony’s alliance with Queen Cleopatra of Egypt as an excuse to turn on him, defeating him at the naval battle of Actium off the west coast of Greece in 31 BCE. Antony and Cleopatra fled to Alexandria and committed suicide the following year.
Now in complete charge of Rome, Octavius began to consolidate his power, carefully remaining within the structural limitations of the republic. He assumed power over Roman provinces, took the position of consul, and was given the title “Augustus,” a religious term that implied powers beyond those of mere mortals. Later he was declared “pater patriae,” or father of his country. Although he accepted the title “Imperator,” this signified only control over the army and was not the title of emperor often mistakenly associated with him.
Augustus, as he is generally known, moved to consolidate many of Julius Caesar’s reforms. He settled thousands of veterans in the provinces, paying the owners of the land with treasure looted from Egypt. To forestall any moves by ambitious generals, he assumed and maintained a position as commander of all military forces. Although the Senate and other republican components of Roman government remained intact, Augustus was emperor in all but name.
After the upheavals of several civil wars, the Romans wanted peace, and Augustus gave it to them. He granted significant autonomy to provincial governors, reformed the Roman economy and tax structure, and began a period of peace and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. He became extremely popular throughout the empire and many statues were erected in his honor. Though Augustus was skeptical of too much expansion of the empire, he did spread Roman influence into central Europe and added more territory to the empire than any other Roman leader.
One of the most significant battles in history occurred during his reign. In 9 CE, the Roman governor Quinctilius Varus was ambushed in the Teutoburg Forest in Germany and lost three legions. Unable to respond adequately, Rome lost any chance of gaining a hold in that region. According to the Roman historian Suetonius (69/75–c. 130 CE) Augustus “took the disaster so deeply to heart that he left his hair and beard untrimmed for months; he would often beat his head on a door, shouting: ‘Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!’ [Quintili Vare, legiones redde!], and he always kept the anniversary as a day of deep mourning.”
The failure to expand Roman civilization into Germany, as it had been expanded into Gaul, has had profound implications to this day. Roman culture, law, government, and language dominated the development of the western part of Europe, while the Germanic portion of Europe developed along quite different lines, more heavily influenced by the “barbarians” of the East.
The Pax Romana ushered in a golden age for Rome that would last for two hundred years. This was the age of Rome’s greatest poet, Virgil (70–19 BCE), whose most famous work, the Aeneid, is both the story of the aftermath of the Trojan War and a treatise on the Roman Republic. Other important writers included Horace, Ovid, Pollio, and Livy. The period also saw many architectural triumphs, some of which survive to this day. Augustus’s team of of architects, most of them probably Greek, built a new Forum, with a temple dedicated to Mars the Avenger in commemoration of his victory at Phillipi; at Augustus’s own expence they restored the Temple of Jupiter on Rome’s Capitoline; and on the Palatine they erected a new temple to Apollo and transformed the Luperine cave—where Rome’s mythical founders, the twins Romulus and Remus, were suckled by the she-wolf—into an leaborate grotto. The accomplishments of Augustus and of Rome during this period are almost without parallel.
Rule by one man has its drawbacks; the poet Ovid (43 BCE–17/18 CE) was exiled because his writing fell out of “imperial” favor, and the upper classes often felt that they were ignored. Nevertheless, Augustus ruled for forty-four years and died peacefully in 14 CE. In his will he counseled Rome against further expansion for fear that the empire would become unmanageable, a prophetic concern that would soon be borne out. Augustus was unable to name a direct descendant as his successor and finally settled on his stepson, Tiberius.
Although in his later years he became more dictatorial, Augustus was arguably the greatest of the Roman leaders. He presided over the expansion and consolidation of Roman civilization. He preserved and extended the reforms begun by Julius Caesar, expanded Rome’s borders to defensible positions in central Europe, placed the army under his direct control, eliminating the possibility of popular generals seizing power, and began a period of peace and prosperity never again repeated in Roman history.
Bibliography:
- Gruen, E. (1995). The last generation of the Roman republic (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Hibbert, C. (1987). Rome: the biography of a city. New York: Penguin.
- Lewis, N., & Reinhold, M. (Eds.). (1990). Roman civilization: Selected readings: Vol. 1, The republic and the Augustan age. New York: Columbia University Press.
- (1992). The lives of noble Grecians and Romans. New York: Modern Library.
- Shuckburgh, E. S. (1995). Augustus Caesar. New York: Barnes and Noble.
- Suetonius Tranquillus, G. (1989). The twelve Caesars. London: Penguin.
- Syme, R. ( 2002). The Roman revolution (2nd ed.). Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
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