Sublime

Octavian – or Augustus, as he was officially known after 27 BCE (a made-up title meaning something close to ‘Revered One’) – dominated Roman political life for more than fifty years, until his death in 14 CE. Going far beyond the precedents set by Pompey and by Caesar, he was the first Roman emperor to last the course and the longest-serving ruler

CHAPTER 9 · THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF AUGUSTUS Caesar’s heir

and of Augustus too.” Yet

Augustus was Rome’s most skillful cultivator. Having navigated himself into unchallenged authority, he used it to turn a failing republic—as if it were a Virgilian vine—into an empire that flourishes, in more ways than most of us realize, even now. Plants aren’t aware that they’re being made to mature in a certain way, but if firmly rooted and

Augustus is dead. Long live Augustus!

Augustus had attempted a careful balancing act, combining extra privileges for the senate and a parade of civilitas with an attempt to reconfigure the old Republican institution into something closer to an arm of administration in his new regime.

For the founding father of all Roman emperors, however, it has always proved difficult to pin him down. In fact, the new name ‘Augustus’, which he adopted soon after his return from Egypt (and which I shall use from now on), captures the slipperiness very nicely. It is a word that evoked ideas of authority (auctoritas) and proper religious

Military success had been one foundation of political power as far back in Roman history as it is possible to go. Augustus outstripped all possible rivals on this score, bringing more territory under Roman rule than anyone else before or after. Yet this was a new kind of imperialism too. The heading of the inscribed text, the closest thing it has

But Augustus became something no Roman had been before: the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces, who appointed their major officers, decided where and against whom the soldiers should fight, and claimed all victories as by definition his own, whoever had commanded on the ground.