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Augustus (Latin: IMP•CAESAR•DIVI•F•AVGVSTVS; September 23, 63 BC–August 19, AD 14), known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (English Octavian; Latin: C•IVLIVS•C•F•CAESAR•OCTAVIANVS) for the period of his life prior to 27 BC, was the first and among the most important of the Roman Emperors. Although he preserved the outward form of the Roman Republic, he ruled as an autocrat for 41 years, and his rule is the dividing line between the Republic and the Roman Empire. He ended a century of civil wars and gave Rome an era of peace, prosperity, and imperial greatness, known as the Pax Romana, or Roman peace.
Early life He was born in Rome (or Velletri) on September 23, 63 BC with the name Gaius Octavius. His father, also Gaius Octavius, came from a respectable but undistinguished family of the equestrian order and was governor of Macedonia. Shortly after Octavius's birth, his father gave him the cognomen of Thurinus, possibly to commemorate his victory at Thurii over a rebellious band of slaves. His mother, Atia, was the niece of Julius Caesar, soon to be Rome's most successful general and Dictator. He spent his early years in his grandfather's house near Veletrae (modern Velletri). In 58 BC, when he was four years old, his father died. He spent most of his childhood in the house of his stepfather, Lucius Marcius Philippus. In 51 BC, aged eleven, Octavius delivered the funeral oration for his grandmother Julia, elder sister of Caesar. He donned the toga virilis at fifteen, and was elected to the College of Pontiffs. Caesar requested that Octavius join his staff for his campaign in Africa, but Atia protested that he was too young. The following year, 46 BC, she consented for him to join Caesar in Hispania, where he planned to fight the forces of Pompey, but he fell ill and was unable to travel. When he had recovered, he sailed to the front, but was shipwrecked; after coming ashore with a handful of companions, he made it across hostile territory to Caesar's camp, which impressed his great-uncle considerably. Caesar and Octavius returned home in the same carriage, and Caesar secretly changed his will. Rise to power
Octavian becomes Augustus: the creation of the Principate The Western half of the Roman Republic territory had sworn allegiance to Octavian prior to Actium in 31 BC, and after Actium and the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, the Eastern half followed suit, placing Octavian in the position of ruler of the Republic. Years of civil war had left Rome in a state of near-lawlessness, but the Republic was not prepared to accept the control of Octavian as a despot. At the same time, Octavian could not simply give up his authority without risking further civil wars amongst the Roman generals, and even if he desired no position of authority whatsoever, his position demanded that he look to the well-being of the City and provinces. Disbanding his personal forces, Octavian held elections and took up the position of consul; as such, though he had given up his personal armies, he was now legally in command of the legions of Rome. First settlement In 27 BC, Octavian officially returned power to the Roman Senate, and offered to relinquish his own military supremacy over Egypt. Reportedly, the suggestion of Octavian's stepping down as consul led to rioting among the Plebeians in Rome. A compromise was reached between the Senate and Octavian's supporters, known as the First Settlement. Octavian was given proconsular authority over the Western half and Syria—the provinces that, combined, contained almost 70% of the Roman legions. The Senate also gave him the titles Augustus and Princeps. Augustus was a title of religious rather than political authority. According to Roman religious beliefs, the title symbolized a stamp of authority over humanity, and in fact nature, that went beyond any constitutional definition of his status. Additionally, after the harsh methods employed in consolidating his control, the change in name would also serve to separate his benign reign as Augustus from his reign of terror as Octavian. Princeps translates to "first-citizen" or "first-leader". It had been a title under the Republic for those who had served the state well; for example, Pompey had held the title. In addition, Augustus was granted the right to hang the corona civicum, the "civic crown" made from oak, above his door, and have laurels drape his doorposts. This crown was usually held above the head of a Roman general during a Triumph, with the individual holding the crown charged to continually repeat, "Remember, thou art mortal," to the triumphant general. Additionally, laurel wreaths were important in several state ceremonies, and crowns of laurel were rewarded to champions of athletic, racing, and dramatic contests. Thus, both the laurel and the oak were integral symbols of Roman religion and statecraft; placing them on Augustus's doorposts was tantamount to declaring his home the capital. However, it must be noted that none of these titles, or the Civic Crown and laurels, granted Octavian any additional powers or authority; for all intents and purposes the new Augustus was simply a highly-honored Roman citizen, holding the consulship within the city and acting as proconsul in territories abroad. These actions were highly abnormal from the Roman Senate, but this was not the same body of patricians that had assasinated Caesar. Both Antony and Octavian had purged the Senate of suspect elements and planted it with their loyal partisans. How free a hand the Senate had in these transactions, and what backroom deals were made, remain unknown. Second settlement In 23 BC, Augustus renounced the consulship, but retained his consular imperium, leading to a second compromise between Augustus and the Senate known as the Second Settlement. Augustus was granted the power of a tribune (tribunicia potestas), though not the title, which allowed him to convene the Senate and people at will and lay business before it, veto the actions of either the Assembly or the Senate, preside over elections, and the right to speak first at any meeting. Also included in Augustus' tribunician authority were powers usually reserved for the Roman censor; these included the right to supervise public morals and scrutinize laws to ensure they were in the public interest, as well as the ability to hold a census and determine the membership of the Senate. No Tribune of Rome ever had these powers, and there was no precedent within the Roman system for combining the powers of the Tribune and the Censor into a single position, nor was Augustus ever elected to the office of Censor. Julius Caesar had been granted similiar powers, wherein he was charged with supervising the morals of the state, however this position did not extend the Censor's ability to hold a census and determine the Senate's roster. Whether censorial powers were granted to Augustus as part of his tribunician authority, or he simply assumed these responsibilities, or, as Augustus indicates in his Res Gestae, he somehow retained consular authority, is still a matter of debate. In addition to tribunician authority, Augustus was granted sole imperium within the city of Rome itself: all armed forces in the city, formerly under the control of the Prefects and consuls, were now under the sole authority of Augustus. Additionally, Augustus was granted imperium proconsulare maius, or "imperium over all the proconsuls", which translated to the right to interfere in any province and override the decisions of any governor. With maius imperium, Augustus was the only individual able to receive a triumph as he was ostensibly the head of every Roman army. Many of the political subtleties of the Second Settlement seem to have evaded the comprehension of the Plebeian class. When, in 22 BC, Augustus failed to stand for election as consul, fears arose once again that Augustus, seen as the great "defender of the people", was being forced from power by the aristocratic Senate. In 22, 21, and 20 BC, the people rioted in response, and only allowed a single consul to be elected for each of those years, ostensibly to leave the other position open for Augustus. Finally, in 19 BC, the Senate voted to allow Augustus to wear the consul's insignia in public and before the Senate, with an act sometimes known as the Third Settlement. This seems to have assuaged the populace; regardless of whether or not Augustus was actually a consul, the importance was that he appeared as one before the people. With these powers in mind, it must be understood that all forms of permanent and legal power within Rome officially lay with the Senate and the people; Augustus was given extraordinary powers, but only as a pronconsul and magistrate under the authority of the Senate. Augustus never presented himself as a king or autocrat, once again only allowing himself to be addressed by the title princeps. After the death of Lepidus in 13 BC, he additionally took up the position of pontifex maximus, the high priest of the collegium of the Pontifices, the most important position in Roman religion. Later Roman Emperors would generally be limited to the powers and titles originally granted to Augustus, though often, in order to display humility, newly appointed Emperors would often decline one or more of the honorifics given to Augustus. Just as often, as their reign progressed, Emperors would appropriate all of the titles, regardless of whether they had actually been granted by the Senate. The Civic Crown (which later Emperors took to actually wearing), consular insignia, and later the purple robes of a Triumphant general (toga picta) became the imperial insignia well into the Byzantine era, and were even adopted by many Germanic tribes invading the former Western empire as insignia of their right to rule. Succession
Augustus legacy
Revenue Reforms Probably Augustus's most important legacy from the standpoint of its impact on the subsequent success of the Empire was his reform of Rome's public revenue system. Three of these reforms, in particular, are considered to have had substantial beneficial effects on both the fairness of the tax system and its effects on the Empire's economic prosperity. The first reform was to bring a much larger portion of the Empire's expanded land base under consistent, direct taxation from Rome, instead of exacting varying, intermittent, and somewhat arbitrary tributes from each local province, as Augustus's predecessors had done. This reform greatly increased Rome's net revenue from its territorial acquisitions, stabilized its flow, and regularized the financial relationship between Rome and the provinces, rather than provoking fresh resentments with each new arbitrary exaction of tribute. The second and equally important reform was the abolition of private tax farming and its replacement with salaried civil service tax collectors. The tax farmers had gained great infamy for their depredations, as well as great private wealth, by winning the right to tax local areas. Rome's revenue was the amount of the successful bids, and the tax farmers' profits consisted of any additional amounts they could forcibly wring from the populace with Rome's blessing. The more rapacious the tax farmer, the more he could afford to bid on the next area, and the more onerous the people's tax burdens became. Lack of effective supervision, combined with tax farmers' desire to maximize their profits, had produced a system of arbitary exactions that was often barbarously cruel to taxpayers, widely (and accurately) perceived as unfair, and very harmful to investment and the economy. Its abolition was an enormous relief to the people, and perhaps more than any other factor explains not only the Empire's great prosperity for the next two centuries, but also Augustus's great personal popularity during his lifetime. The third reform, the use of Egypt's immense land rents to finance the Empire's operations, resulted from Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt and the shift under Augustus to an imperial form of government. As it was effectively considered first Julius's and then Augustus's private property, and became part of each succeeding emperor's patrimonium, the highly productive agricultural land of Egypt yielded enormous revenues that were available to Augustus and his successors to pay for public works and military expeditions, as well as bread and circuses for the population of Rome. The diversion of this land rent to Rome's coffers was probably even beneficial to the Egyptian economy and people, as Rome provided better infrastructure and public administration in return for the money than the pharoahs had ever done. Month The month of August (Latin Augustus) is named after Augustus; until his time it was called Sextilis (the sixth month of the Roman calendar). Commonly repeated lore has it that August has 31 days because Augustus wanted his month to match the length of Julius Caesar's July, but this is an invention of the 13th-century scholar Johannes de Sacrobosco. Sextilis in fact had 31 days before it was renamed, and it was not chosen for its length (see Julian calendar). A more widely held reason is that it was chosen since it was the month in which Cleopatra (Marc Antony's lover) committed suicide. Building projects Augustus boasted that he 'found Rome brick and left it marble'. Although this did not apply to the Subura slums, which were still as rickety and fire-prone as ever, he did leave a mark on the monumental topography of the centre and of the Campus Martius, with the Ara Pacis sundial (using an obelisk), the Temple of Caesar, the Forum of Augustus with its Temple of Mars Ultor, and also other projects either encouraged by him (eg Theatre of Balbus, Agrippa's construction of the Pantheon) or funded by him in the name of others, often relations (eg Portico of Octavia, Theatre of Marcellus). Even his own mausoleum was built before his death to house members of his family. Augustus in popular culture Film Television Literature Modern archaeological research In July 2006, archaeologists announced that they had discovered what they believed to be the birthplace of Augustus. Head archaeologist Clementina Panella stated that the team uncovered a section of corridor and other fragments under Rome's Palatine Hill, which she described on July 20 as "a very ancient aristocratic house", and stated that "the emperor was particularly fond of the area." * See also Notes Further reading Primary sources Secondary material sm:Aokuso Kaisara | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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