The Roman Emperor: Augustus Caesar

Date: 44 BC - 14 CE
Location: Italy, the Mediterranean

The statue known as Augustus of Prima Porta, 1st century

        After Julius Caesar died in 44 BC, his cheif lieutenant Mark Antony, attempting to manipulate public opinion allied himself with Octavian - Caesar's 18-year-old adoptive son - in order to exploit his family connections and gain political support. Antony miscalculated, for Octavian, although young, was even shrewder than Caesar. He remained in alliance with Antony and Lepidus - who played the role of financier in this "Second Triumvirate" - for only as long as it took to defeat the armies that had been raised by Brutus and Cassius, Caesar's murderers.
        In 32 BC, war broke out among the Second Triumvirate. At Actium the following year, Antony was defeated, and both he and his mistress, the Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra, commited suicide. Octavian did seek immediate revenge against Antony's partisans. Nor did he have himself made Dictator, as Caesar had done. Instead, he manipulated Republican politics to acquire supreme power without seeming to usurp the Senate's authority.

        In 27 BC, Octavian was granted a special form of authority, known as proconsular imperium, for 10 years, which in effect allowed him to act as he chose in all provinces where the army was currently based. In the same year, he took the title "Augustus". In 23 BC, Augustus acquired the permanent power of a tribune of the plebians, making him invulnerable to legal action. Although he did not refer to himself as an emperor, this was the position he now held.
        Augustus secured the empire's borders along the Danube river and sent armies into Germany, which he was about to conquer when a disastarous defeat in 9 CE caused a retreat from the Elbe river back to the Rhine. His last years saw a defensive stance along existing frontiers.