Augustus

Caesar's heir, who turned a republic into an empire

Augustus, born Gaius Octavius, was the first Roman emperor. Named heir by his great-uncle Julius Caesar at eighteen, he outlasted Caesar's assassins, his fellow triumvirs and Mark Antony, whom he beat at Actium in 31 BC. He then did what Caesar had not: he kept the forms of the Republic and quietly emptied them, taking the name Augustus in 27 BC and ruling as princeps, first citizen, for forty years. He gave the empire a professional army, paid governors, a census, a police and fire service for Rome, marble temples and the poets Virgil and Horace. He died in AD 14, was declared a god, and left a system that lasted centuries.

Timeline

23 Sep 63 BC

Born — In Rome, as Gaius Octavius, son of a senator from Velitrae

44 BC

Caesar's heir — Adopted in Caesar's will at eighteen; takes the name Caesar

43 BC

Consul and triumvir — Consul at nineteen; the triumvirs' proscriptions kill Cicero and hundreds more

42 BC

Philippi — Brutus and Cassius defeated; Antony does most of the fighting

2 Sep 31 BC

Actium — Agrippa's fleet defeats Antony and Cleopatra; a year later Egypt is his

16 Jan 27 BC

Augustus — The Senate gives him the name; the principate begins

AD 4

Adopts Tiberius — His grandsons Gaius and Lucius dead, he adopts his stepson as heir

AD 9

Teutoburg — Three legions under Varus destroyed in Germany

19 Aug AD 14

Dies — At Nola, aged 75; the Senate makes him a god

Family

photo Gaius Octavius praetor · died 59 BC

photo Atia niece of Julius Caesar · died 43 BC

photo Augustus 63 BC–14

photo Scribonia mother of Julia · married 40, divorced 39 BC

photo Julia his only child · 39 BC–AD 14

photo Gaius Caesar grandson, adopted 17 BC · 20 BC–AD 4

photo Lucius Caesar grandson, adopted 17 BC · 17 BC–AD 2

photo Tiberius stepson, adopted AD 4 · 42 BC–AD 37

photo Agrippa Postumus grandson, adopted AD 4, disowned AD 7 · 12 BC–AD 14

Julia, his only child by blood, was married to Marcellus, Agrippa and Tiberius in turn and banished for adultery in 2 BC. Gaius and Lucius, her sons by Agrippa, died young; Tiberius, Livia's son by her first marriage, succeeded him. Agrippa Postumus was killed within days of Augustus's death.

Caesar's heir

Gaius Octavius was born in Rome on 23 September 63 BC, the son of a new senator from Velitrae and of Atia, Julius Caesar's niece. His father died when he was four. Caesar noticed the boy, took him to Spain in 45 and, in a will opened after the Ides of March, adopted him and left him three quarters of his estate. He was eighteen, studying in Illyricum, and his mother advised him to decline. He came to Rome instead and called himself Gaius Julius Caesar.

Mark Antony treated him as a boy; Cicero treated him as a tool against Antony. Within twenty months the boy had raised a private army from Caesar's veterans, forced the Senate to make him consul at nineteen, and struck a bargain with Antony and Lepidus: a three-man dictatorship, the triumvirate, legalised in November 43 BC. Its first act was a proscription that killed Cicero and hundreds of others. At Philippi in 42 the triumvirs' armies crushed Caesar's assassins.

The last civil war

The triumvirs split the world: Antony took the east, Octavian the west and the thankless job of settling veterans on confiscated Italian land. He survived a revolt at Perusia, a famine caused by Sextus Pompey's fleet and two lost sea battles, until Agrippa, his friend since school, built a new navy and destroyed Sextus at Naulochus in 36 BC. Lepidus tried to claim Sicily and was stripped of everything but his priesthood.

Antony, meanwhile, had married Cleopatra's cause. Octavian read his rival's will to the Senate — it left legacies to Cleopatra's children and asked for burial in Alexandria — and declared war on the queen, not the Roman. On 2 September 31 BC Agrippa's fleet beat theirs at Actium. The next summer Octavian took Alexandria; Antony and Cleopatra killed themselves, Caesarion was executed, and Egypt became the property of the conqueror. At thirty-two he had no rival left.

The first citizen

On 13 January 27 BC he handed his powers back to the Senate, which handed most of them back with the name Augustus, “the revered one”. The settlement of 23 BC replaced the consulship with the tribune's powers for life and an overriding command over the provinces. He called himself princeps, first citizen, and he meant it as camouflage.

“After that time I excelled all in authority, but I had no more power than the others who were my colleagues in each magistracy.”

— Augustus, *Res Gestae* 34, the account of his deeds he had cut on bronze at his tomb

Behind the camouflage the work was real: a standing army with fixed pay and pensions, provinces governed by paid legates, a fire brigade and police for Rome, roads, aqueducts, a census, marriage laws to raise the birthrate of the upper classes, and a building programme so vast that he claimed to have found Rome brick and left it marble. Virgil and Horace, patronised by his friend Maecenas, wrote the age its poetry.

The succession

The one thing he could not arrange was an heir. His only child, Julia, was married in turn to his nephew Marcellus, to Agrippa and to his stepson Tiberius; her sons Lucius and Gaius, whom he adopted, died in AD 2 and AD 4, and Julia herself was banished for adultery in 2 BC. Tiberius, adopted in AD 4, was the last man standing. In AD 9 three legions were destroyed in the Teutoburg Forest; Suetonius says the old man beat his head against a door crying for them back.

He died at Nola on 19 August AD 14, in the room where his father had died, asking his friends whether he had played the comedy of life well. The Senate made him a god. His system — an emperor behind republican forms — ran the Mediterranean through two centuries of peace, and the names Caesar and Augustus were still worn by rulers in the twentieth century.