Gaius Octavian, also known as Augustus, September 23, 63 BC-August 19, 14 AD) was the founding monarch of the Roman Empire and ruled Rome for 43 years. In August 14 AD, after his death, the Roman Senate decided to include him in the ranks of "gods" and called August the month of "Augustus", which was also the source of August in European languages.

Octavian is generally believed to be one of the greatest Roman emperors. Although he maintained the superficial form of the Roman Republic, he ruled Rome as a dictator for more than 40 years. He ended a century of civil war and entered the Roman Empire into a long period of glory of peace and prosperity. Historians often call him by his title "Augustus"(meaning veneration). He acquired the title in 27 BC, when he was 36 years old.

Octavian, the nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, was officially designated as Caesar's heir. In 43 BC, he formed a three-headed alliance with Mark Antony and Lepidus to defeat the republican nobles who assassinated Julius Caesar.

In 36 BC, he deprived Lepida of military power. After defeating Antony at the Battle of Aktu, he destroyed the Ptolemaic dynasty in ancient Egypt. After returning to Rome, he began to hold all state power. In the first 30 years, he was confirmed as a "lifelong tribune", and in the first 29 years, he was awarded the title of "Grand Marshal"; in the first 28 years, he was awarded the title of "Augustus" (holy, supreme), establishing an autocratic head of state and founding the Roman Empire.

[Life]

rise

Augustus was born in Rome as Gaius Octavius Thurinus. His father, Gaius Octavius, came from a noble but unknown family of knights and was governor of Macedonia until his death in 58 BC. More importantly, his mother, Atiyah, was the niece of Rome's greatest general and de facto ruler, Gaius Julius Caesar, who adopted him and named him as his heir in his will (see the adoption system in ancient Rome). Antony accused Octavius of being a child molester to please Caesar. The Roman historian Suetonius analyzed Antony's accusation as an attempt to pour dirty water on Octavian. As an adopted son of Caesar, Octavius, in accordance with Roman custom, therefore accepted a new name: Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (later known as "Octavian").

When Caesar was assassinated in March 44 BC, Octavian was in the army of Apollonia. He was eighteen years old, and his opponents often subconsciously despised this young man. However, he repeatedly emphasized that he was Caesar's son to arouse people's affection for him (so that he called himself Guy Julius and deliberately omitted Octavian). He marched to Italy and recruited Caesar's old troops to expand his army. After arriving in Rome, he found that the capital was in the hands of the Republicans who murdered Caesar, Marcus Junius Brutus and Cassius. After a tense standoff, he formed an uncomfortable alliance with Mark Antony and Marcus Emilius Rapida, Caesar's important colleague. The three-man composition is known as the second three-headed military dictatorship. Then they began to clean out the Senate. 300 elders and 3000 knights were dispossessed and died. This is not only a "purification", a large part of their lost assets is used to maintain and expand their army.

Next, Anthony and Octavian led the army to pursue Brutus and Cassius, who had fled to the east. At Philippi (in Macedonia), Octavian's army won, and Brutus and Cassius committed suicide (42 BC). So Octavian returned to Rome, while Anthony went to Egypt, where he formed an alliance with Queen Cleopatra, Julius Caesar's former lover, and the mother of Caesar's infant Caesarion (the younger Caesar). At this point, Rome's territory belonged to Octavian in the west and Anthony in the east.

Antony was busy with the war in the East and his love affair with Cleopatra; Octavian rallied people in Rome, consolidated power, and slandered Antony: Antony was more and more like an Egyptian than a Roman. The situation became more and more tense. Finally, in 32 BC, Octavian declared war on Antony. Soon the battle was over: in the Gulf of Actium on the west coast of Greece, Octavian defeated Antony. Antony fled to Egypt, fought Octavian again, but lost again, and committed suicide. Cleopatra committed suicide. The little Caesar was ruthlessly killed by Octavian, so as not to affect his identity as Caesar's only inheritance.

Feng Shen

After the Battle of Actium, Octavian had cleared all obstacles to his advance. After years of civil war, Rome was almost lawless, but Rome was unwilling to accept an absolute monarch. Octavian was clever. First, he disbanded the army and held elections. As a result, Octavian was elected consul, the highest administrator of the Roman Republic. In 27 BC, he officially declared that he would restore the Senate and withdraw his forces from Egypt. The Senate not only rejected his request, but also granted him dominion over Spain, Gaul, and Syria - the three most powerful provinces in Rome. Immediately, the Senate awarded him the "Augustus". This title is related to ancient religions, and is said to be derived from "authority" (auctoritas) and related to the spiritual practice of the beholder (augur). In the religious beliefs of the time, this title meant that the bearer had authority beyond human beings and that the nature of his status could not be defined by any statute. In addition, this special method used to consolidate Octavian's power also made his impending imperial rule sharply different from the reign of terror when he was still a man.

These things were unusual in the Roman political tradition. But the Senate was no longer the one of the nobles who assassinated Caesar. Antony and Octavian purged the Senate of dissidents and spread their henchmen throughout the Senate. We don't know to what extent these resolutions expressed the will of the Senate, and how many black-box operations were behind it.

Augustus was well aware that the consul did not guarantee his absolute power. In 23 BC, he resigned from the ruling office and accepted two other positions. One was the tribunicia potestas, which allowed him to intervene in the Senate at will and decide before the Senate. Since the tribunicia usually dealt with civil affairs, this further consolidated his power. The second was the "imperium proconsulare maius" (power above the governors), which gave him supreme authority over any matter of territorial administration. It is generally believed that Augustus wore a yellow robe for the first 23 years. However, he still used the title of first citizen (Princeps). In 13 BC, Libida died and Augustus added the "Pontifex Maximus".

rule

Augustus seized power with great audacity and ruled Rome with great prudent wisdom. Rome gave him near-absolute power, and he gave Rome forty years of domestic peace and growing prosperity, known as the "Pax Romana" (Pax Romana). He founded Rome's first standing army (including the navy) and stationed legions on the frontiers to prevent them from interfering in internal affairs. He also founded the Praetorian Guard to garrison the Gyeonggi and defend the emperor himself. He also reformed Rome's fiscal and taxation systems.

Augustus did not launch large-scale wars. The Battle of the Mountains of Northern Spain from 26 BC to 19 BC ended in the successful conquest of the area. After repeated riots in Gaul, the Arpin region was also conquered. Rome's territory expanded to the natural territory of the Danube River, and Galatia Province was occupied by Rome. In 9 AD, Rome lost in the ambush in the Teutonburg Forest. Rome's expansion into western Germany stopped. He later accepted the Rhine River as the final border of the empire. In the east, Rome annexed Armenia and the Caucasus, and expansion stopped at the borders of the Parthian Empire.

In internal affairs, Augustus used the vast wealth he had amassed from the empire to provide generous treatment to the army; he decorated the capital and flourished recreational activities to please the Roman citizens. He boasted that "a brick city has become a city of marble in my hands." He built the new Curia and the Temple of Apollo and Julius. He also built a shrine near the Circus Maximus. It is reported that the Temple of Capitoline and the Pompeian Theater (which was not named when it was built) were both built by Augustus. It established the Ministry of Transportation and completed a vast transportation network that promoted communications, trade and postal services for the empire. Augustus also established the world's first fire brigade. It has also established a regular police force in Rome.

Roman rulers were generally ignorant of economics, and Augustus was no exception. Roman emperors, including Augustus, spent heavy taxes from agriculture on troops, temples, and entertainment. Once the empire stopped expanding and there were no war plunder, the economy began to stagnate and eventually declined. From this perspective, the rule of Augustus was the peak of imperial power and prosperity. Augustus tried to revitalize agriculture by putting veterans into agriculture, but with little success. The capital still relies on food imported from Egypt.

Augustus strongly encouraged the worship of Roman gods, especially Apollo. It describes Rome's victory over Egypt as the victory of the Roman god over the Egyptian god. Aenead, who sponsored Virgil, had the purpose of enhancing the reputation of his Roman ancestors. Augustus also rectified the world, praising marriage, family and childbirth, and attacking luxury, promiscuity (including prostitution and homosexuality) and adultery, but with little success. (However, his daughter was exiled and sentenced to death for this.)

Augustus was also a protector of literature and art. He helped poets, artists, sculptors, and architects. His reign was the golden age of Roman literature. Under his protection, Horace, Levi, Ovid, and Virgil stood out. These people praised his genius to come close to his standards, lest they be exiled. Ovid was exiled for indecency (Augustus's standard). He won the praise of almost the entire Roman intellectual community, although many still secretly miss the republic. He won the support of the masses by means of entertainment and the celebration of his own and his family's festivals. When Augustus died, it was impossible for Rome to return to the republic, and the only question was who would inherit Augustus.

inheritance

Augustus's control of power, throughout the empire, was so absolute that he was allowed to appoint his own heirs, and the democratic habits of Rome since the establishment of the republic have been abandoned and ridiculed. At first, it was for Marcellus, the son of his sister, who had married Augustus's daughter Julia Caesaris. However, Marcellus died of food poisoning in 23 BC. Historians later criticized the poisoning, and its subsequent death, as being due to the poisoning of Augustus's wife, Viya, but it cannot be proven to be true.

After the death of Marcaeus, Augustus married his daughter to his right-hand man, Marcus Agrippa. The two had five children, three sons and two daughters: Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Vipsania Julia, Agrippina the Grand, and Postomus Agrippa, so named because these children were born after the death of Marcus Agrippa. When Augustus adopted his first two children as his own sons, he clearly had plans to make them his heirs. Augustus loved his adopted son very much. The children born to Livia's first marriage, Nero Claudius Durosus Germannicus and Tiberius Claudius, were also very important to Augustus, allowing them to conquer a large part of Germany.

After Agrippa's death in 12 BC, Viya's son Tiberius divorced his wife and married Agrippa's widow. Tiberius shared Augustus' tribune duties, but soon retired. After the deaths of Guy and Lucius in 4 BC and 2 BC respectively, and the death of his brother Dulusus (9 BC), Tiberius was recalled to Rome and adopted by Augustus.

On August 19, 14 A.D., Augustus died. Posthoms Agrippa and Tiberius were named as joint heirs. However, Posthoms was exiled and executed shortly after. It is not known who ordered his execution, but for Tiberius it cleared the way for him to inherit his adoptive father's power.

[Evaluation]

Immediately after his death, Augustus was placed in the ranks of gods and deified. Both the name Caesar and his title Augustus became permanent titles for Roman rulers for the next four hundred years. The Byzantine Empire still used this title 1,400 years later. The German Kaiser and Tsar in the early twentieth century were both derived from his name. Until Constantine the Great adopted Christianity as the state religion in the fourth century, the god Augustus was a Roman worship idol. So many exquisite statues and busts of Augustus can still be seen today. Augustus' mausoleum originally also had bronze columns inscribed with "Res Gestae Divi Augusti" (Res Gestae Divi Augusti).

Many people consider Augustus to be the greatest emperor of Rome. Its policy undoubtedly greatly extended the life of Rome and ushered in the golden age of Rome, namely the "Peace of Rome"(or "Peace of Augustus"). Augustus had a graceful demeanor, dignified appearance, alert, high understanding, and ability to decide on major issues. He was a very cunning political genius. But he was not as radiant as his adoptive father Caesar or his rival Anthony. Augustus's reputation was not as loud as these two men. Although he was more often confused with Julius Caesar, his legacy was more lasting than that of the other two.

The lunar order of August (Latin Augustus, the Roman month of June) was named after Augustus; before this it was called Sextillis (Latin for six).

Looking back at Augustus's rule and the legacy he left to Rome, his longevity must not be ignored. This was one of the key factors in the longevity of the monarchy that began by him. Its subjects were unaware of any other system than the Principal. If he had died early (say in the first 23 years), things might have been very different. The successive civil wars during the oligarchy of the Roman Republic and the longevity of Augustus were decisive factors in Rome's transformation from a republic to an imperial system. Augustus's personal shrewdness, patience, ingenuity and his booming political reputation also played a role. His creation influenced subsequent imperial policies in many aspects: maintaining the standing army and stationing it on the border, the principles and methods of succession to the throne, and using the emperor's funds to decorate the capital. Its most important legacy was the system that would maintain the peace and prosperity of the empire for the next two hundred years. In the imperial era, his behavior was regarded as a model for a wise monarch. Although later Roman emperors all adopted the title "Caesar Augustus", only a few people were truly worthy of it.