Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Rule of Augustus Gaius Octavius, known to history first as Octavian and then as Augustus Caesar, was born in 63 BC in a relatively obscure patrician family. His only evident advantage in life was that his grandmother was Julia, sister of Julius Caesar. His great-uncle saw talent in the boy and encouraged him. Octavian was an 18-year-old student at Apollonia (in what is now Albania) when news came in 44 BC that his uncle has been assassinated in Rome. Soon there was further information. In his will Caesar had named Octavian as his successor and left him three quarters of his estate. Octavian moved decisively. Hurrying back to Rome, he paid for games in honor of Caesar and raised a force of 3000 men from his uncle's veterans. Among the supporters of Caesar he had a natural opponent Mark Antony, the dictator's trusted lieutenant, who did more than anyone to calm the situation after the Ides of March. The armies of the two men met near Modena in 43. A victory for the young and inexperienced Octavian gave him the prestige to negotiate on equal terms with Antony. They form an alliance against the enemies of Caesar. In 42 BC they cross the Adriatic together in pursuit of his assassins. The armies of Octavian and Mark Antony, supporters of the murdered Caesar, and of Brutus and Cassius, his assassins, met in 42 BC at Philippi. In two separate engagements the forces of Brutus and Cassius fare the worse. Both men commit suicide. The two victors separate to secure control of the empire. Octavian busied himself with the western territories, while Antony moved east - into regions which he found increasingly seductive, in the arms of Cleopatra. Signs of tension between Octavian and Antony are eased in 40 BC when Antony returned briefly to Italy and married Octavian's sister, Octavia. But family relations are not improved three years later when news came that Antony, back with his army in the east, has also married Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt. The marriage is not legal in Roman law, for Cleopatra is not a Roman citizen. But it signals the end of any pretence of alliance between the two rivals for power. The Battle of Actium, in 31, decided the issue. Octavian was victorious. Antony and Cleopatra fled back to Egypt, where Octavian pursues them. On his arrival, in 30, they both commit suicide. Octavian stayed in the east long enough to secure Cleopatra's Egypt as a new province of the empire. In August 29 Octavian enters Rome in triumph, the undisputed master of both east and west. The example of Julius Caesar's end made Octavian cautious in pursuit of supreme power. During the years after his victorious return to Rome he seems to hedge reluctantly into the role which he would fill with such skill - that of emperor. A turning point came in the year 27 BC, when he voluntarily gave up all his military powers and was then granted by the senate a 10-year-command over three important outposts of empire - Spain, Gaul and Syria. Meanwhile he holds various civilian offices which provide him with political power at the center. It is typical of Octavian's political skill that under this arrangement the much-cherished republic of Rome appears still to be intact. Yet with hindsight historians have judged 27 BC to be the founding year of the empire. In this same year the senate gave Octavian the life-long title of Augustus, the name by which he is subsequently known to history. The rule of Augustus Caesar brought an forty years of peace in Italy. With few setbacks on distant frontiers, Rome and its territories enjoyed a steady increase in prosperity and trade. The frontiers of empire were slightly extended. More important, they become properly defended. Professional careers were now possible in the army (recruits signed on for sixteen years, later it was increased to twenty) and in the civil service. Improved roads made it easier to keep in close touch with distant parts of the Roman world, and to move troops wherever they are needed. New towns, built to Roman design, are established in areas where there was previously no administrative structure. The region in which Augustus made the most effort to extend the empire was beyond the Alps into Germany. By 14 BC the German tribes were subdued up to the Danube. In the next five years Roman legions push forward to the Elbe. But this further border proved impossible to hold. In AD 9 Arminius, a German chieftain of great military skill, destroyed three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest. The Romans pulled back (though they return briefly to avenge what seems a shameful defeat). The conclusion, bequeathed by Augustus to his successors, is that the Roman Empire had some natural boundaries; to the north these are the Rhine and the Danube. The stability of Rome made possible a flowering of the arts. The term Augustan Age came to represent the idea of cultural excellence, just as the name of Augustus's close friend Maecenas enthusiastic supporter of both Virgil and Horace is now synonymous with artistic patronage. The emperor was also an enthusiastic builder. He boasted, with some justification, that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. One of the hardest problems confronting Augustus was the question of his own succession. His attempts to solve it were often authoritarian and blunt, but they were innocent compared to the actions of his family in the five decades after his death in AD 14. Octavian Leads