Augustus Born: Architect of the Roman Empire

Augustus was born Gaius Octavius in Rome on September 23, 63 BC, the son of a relatively obscure senator and Atia, the niece of Julius Caesar. His family was respectable but not powerful. It was Caesar's decision to adopt him as his heir that changed everything, and it was Augustus's ruthless determination that made the inheritance stick. He was eighteen years old when Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BC. He was studying in Apollonia (in modern Albania) when the news reached him. He returned to Rome, claimed his inheritance despite opposition from Mark Antony and the Senate, and spent the next thirteen years fighting, negotiating, and eliminating rivals until he was the last man standing. He formed the Second Triumvirate with Antony and Lepidus, defeated the assassins Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 BC, and then turned on his fellow triumvirs. Lepidus was sidelined. Antony, seduced by Cleopatra and the wealth of Egypt, was defeated at Actium in 31 BC. Augustus was 33 years old and the sole ruler of the Roman world. His genius was political. He understood that Romans had killed Caesar for appearing to be a king. He would hold the same power but never take the title. He called himself princeps, first citizen, not rex. He maintained the Senate, the consuls, and the outward forms of the Republic while concentrating real authority in his own hands. The fiction was transparent, but Romans accepted it because the alternative was another civil war. He reorganized the army into a professional standing force of 28 legions. He established a permanent fire brigade and police force for Rome. He built roads, aqueducts, and temples. His building program justified his famous boast: "I found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble." His political system, the Principate, inaugurated the Pax Romana, two centuries of relative peace across the empire. The administrative structures he created, provincial governance, tax collection, legal frameworks, formed the foundation on which Western civilization built for the next two thousand years. He died on August 19, 14 AD, at Nola, at 75.