Augustus Caesar Born: Rome's First Emperor

Gaius Octavius was born on September 23, 63 BC, in Rome, the great-nephew of Julius Caesar and an entirely unremarkable-seeming young man from a prosperous but politically minor family until Caesar's assassination on March 15, 44 BC, revealed that the dictator had named the eighteen-year-old as his adopted son and heir. Almost nobody expected the slight, sickly teenager to survive the power struggle that followed. Mark Antony, Caesar's most powerful lieutenant, dismissed him publicly. Cicero, the Senate's greatest orator, planned to use him as a tool against Antony and then discard him. Octavian outmaneuvered them both. He formed the Second Triumvirate with Antony and Lepidus, proscribed and killed hundreds of political opponents including Cicero, then turned on his partners one by one. He defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and became the sole ruler of the Roman world. He governed for forty-four years as Rome's first emperor, carefully avoiding the title of king that had cost Caesar his life, calling himself Princeps, "first citizen," and Augustus, "the revered one." He rebuilt Rome in marble, reorganized the provinces, professionalized the army, expanded the empire's borders to the Danube and the Rhine, and presided over a period of relative peace and cultural flourishing that became known as the Pax Romana. His propaganda machine was so effective that the distinction between Augustus the man and Augustus the myth remains difficult to untangle two thousand years later. On his deathbed in 14 AD, he reportedly asked his attendants: "Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit." He had been playing a part since he was nineteen.