Download Rule of Augustus

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