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Caesar Augustus: Roman Empire
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Roman silver denarius bearing image of Octavian with Latin inscription: Caesar Augustus [minted 13 BCE]. The other side of this two-faced coin has the image of Augustus' vice-regent, Marcus Agrippa. For high resolution images of this & more coins of early Roman rulers see Sandy Brenner's vivid numismatic guide: Jerusalem Through Coins.
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The main ancient source for Augustus's life is Suetonius's chapter "The Deified Augustus" in the Lives of the Twelve Caesars. The career of Augustus is ... discussed in Tacitus's History. Augustus left an account of his own deeds called the Res gestae, or more popularly, the Monumentum ancyranum. John Buchan, Augustus (1937), is still the standard biography in English. Much that is valuable relating to Augustus's career may be found in T. Rice Holmes, The Architect of the Roman Empire (2 vols., 1928-1931), and in Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (1939). See also Henry Thompson Rowell, Rome: In the Augustan Age (1962).
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Adopted by Caesar, Augustus (c.62 BC – 14 AD / Reigned 31 BC – 14 AD) had to fight for his throne. His long rule saw a huge expansion in the Roman Empire and the beginnings of a dynasty that, over the next century, would transform Rome, for better and worse.
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With only a few brief interludes, Rome was perpetually at war from the time of the Tarquins to the ascent of Caesar Augustus. In Alexander Hamilton’s words, she “never sated of carnage and conquest.” Like Sparta, Rome, both as a monarchy and as a republic, was organized along military lines. Every able-bodied Roman male saw annual military service throughout his young adult years, until the time of Marius in the late second century B.C. when Rome professionalized her military. So pervasive was the military in Roman political culture that even the senators were known as “conscript fathers.” Much of Rome’s success can be attributed to her fanatical attention to military order and to the cultivation of virtues conducive to military strength: unswerving loyalty, obedience, frugality, and disregard for peril to life and limb.
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To avoid Caesar’s fate, Augustus charmed the Senate and the people by pretending to give up power. But a series of disasters panicked Romans. They became convinced that only he could save them and begged the Senate to vote him absolute ruler.
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