Augustus

Julius Caesar lies dead on the floor of the Senate. What will happen now? The answer lies with a man called Octavian, who will surprise and astonish the ancient world by reinventing the Roman state and ensuring two hundred years of peace - he is better known by his honorary title of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.

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Hello and welcome back to the fall of the Roman Empire. My name is Nick Holmes, and this is episode 4 called Augustus. And in this episode, we're still looking at Rome's extraordinary rise to power since we need to know what Rome was before we can understand why it fell. And in this episode, we'll move on to the creation of the Roman Empire by a truly remarkable man who was called Octavian, but is best known by the name that the Senate conferred on him. That is, of course, Augustus, the first and the greatest of the Roman Emperors. So let's rejoin the story when Julius Caesar is lying bleeding to death on the floor of the Roman Senate, stabbed 23 times. Rome was thrown into chaos by Caesar's assassination. What would happen now? Would the Republic be restored? The Romans divided between Caesar's supporters and those who wanted to return to the Republic. Caesar's assassins, Brutus and Cassius, who wanted to restore the Republic, faced the pro-Caesar faction, which came to consist of two of Caesar's most loyal generals, Marc Antony and Marcus Lepidus, together with a relatively unknown young man of 18 called Octavian, Caesar's great nephew, and in the absence of any surviving legitimate children, his adopted heir. Short, unprepossessing, and initially at least almost unknown in political circles, no one could have guessed what he would achieve. His initial claim to power was simply that Julius Caesar had made him his adopted heir in the absence of any surviving children. Regarded initially, at least as a bit of a joke by the tough veteran of Caesar's wars, Mark Antony, most senators initially thought they had little to fear from this young upstart. How wrong they were, for Octavian would become the first and greatest Roman Emperor of all, Augustus. But let's look first at what happened in the aftermath of Caesar's assassination. The city of Rome was seized by Marc Antony. Caesar's assassins were initially pardoned but then fled to the east. Octavian and Antony at first fought each other as rivals to Caesar's legacy, but then patched things up. To oppose the growing power of Caesar's assassins and the oratorical flourishes of Cicero, who became the Republic's most eloquent supporter, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus formed the second triumvirate. This was effectively a coup d'etat, and a brutal one at that, which involved a Stalin-like purge of the Senate, with 300 pro-Republican senators dragged from their homes and killed. Cicero himself was beheaded and his head displayed in the Roman Forum. But the Triumvirs still faced a formidable Republican army led by Brutus and Cassius. In 42 BC, the armies of both sides met in northern Greece outside the town of Philippi to fight what was probably the largest battle ever fought in the ancient world involving 36 legions and up to 200,000 men. The Roman world had descended into self-inflicted carnage. No one knows exactly where the Battle of Philippi was fought, but the descriptions of it left to us by Roman historians paint a picture reminiscent of the First World War. Huge numbers of Roman legionaries and auxiliary troops battled it out in a war of attrition, fought over three weeks and involving two massive engagements. Antony tried some tactical innovations such as building pontoons over the nearby marshes in an attempt to outflank the Republicans. But when this failed, the result was essentially a bloody slogging match between the two sides. Antony, rather than Octavian, who was actually ill during most of the battle, deserved the credit for keeping his nerve and forcing a victory for the Triumvirs. By the end, over 20,000 Roman soldiers were dead. Brutus and Cassius committed suicide and the remains of their armies surrendered. The Roman Republic was officially dead. Or was it? For out of the chaos of the Roman civil wars there emerged a totally new Roman world order that claimed, however falsely, to restore the Republic. It was also the work of one man alone who put his stamp on history even more than Julius Caesar did. This was the diminutive Octavian, a man who would centuries later be called the grandfather of Europe and is best known to us as the most famous Roman Emperor of all, Augustus. When Cicero's head was hanging in the forum and three hundred senators had been butchered by Octavian's hit squads in scenes reminiscent of Stalin's purges or Hitler's Kristalnacht, the Roman population realized that Octavian was not a mere boy playing politics, but a ruthless would-be tyrant. Octavian's great advantage was his bloodlink with Julius Caesar, for most Romans, even Republicans, could not help but admire Caesar's military triumphs. Nevertheless, it was Mark Antony who regarded himself as Caesar's true heir, but he lacked vision or political acumen. In contrast, Octavian had an abundance of both. After Brutus and Cassius were defeated, it was only a matter of time before the triumvirate fell apart. Lepidus was the first to bow out. Fearful of Octavian's brutality, he gave up his claim on power. Octavian was left to fight it out with Marc Antony, who had sided with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, who was scandalously his lover, although he was in fact married, to Octavian's sister. Their conflict came to a head on the 2nd of September 31 BC, in a naval battle in the Gulf of Actium off the coast of northwestern Greece. Mark Antony had an enormous fleet of 500 galleys, the might of the Roman East, together with Cleopatra's Egyptian fleet. Against him, Octavian had only half the number of vessels, most of which were also smaller, but Octavian's fleet was commanded by the extremely capable Roman admiral Agrippa. Mark Antony began his attack spearheaded by huge galleys with multi-banked rows of oars towering like floating fortresses. But Agrippa skilfully sidestepped the great ship so that Mark Antony was unable to use their power. Then, for reasons that have never been explained, Cleopatra decided to flee. One theory is that her ships were caught in dead water and unable to move. Mark Antony thought he'd been abandoned and started to retreat. As his ships turned around, chaos ensued. Agrippa's smaller vessels surrounded Marc Antony's floating fortresses and overwhelmed them. Marc Antony and Cleopatra fled back to Egypt, pursued by Octavian, where they both committed suicide. Thereafter Octavian seized power for himself. Like the Battle of Philippi, the Battle of Actium turned out to be another turning point in Roman history. At first it looked as if it was just a battle between the two surviving triumvirs, effectively a fight between two rival monarchs, but it turned out to be far more than that. It was the beginning of one of the most extraordinary ages in the history of the world. It was the start of the longest period of peace that Europe has ever known. It was the creation of the Pax Romana, or the Roman peace as it's called. For it transpired that Octavian was not in fact a brutal tyrant, but one of the most adept politicians known in history. His aim was to prevent further civil wars while retaining power for himself. To do this he achieved one of the most extraordinary political conjuring tricks in the whole of history, for after Marc Antony's death, Octavian said he would return full political authority to the Senate in Rome and to restore the Republic. But at the same time, he persuaded the Senate to give him authority for ten years over the new Roman provinces in the East and West, so it was claimed in order for him to implement Roman rule more effectively. Since almost all the legions were stationed in these new provinces, this gave him de facto control of the army, which was anyway one of his main supporters as the official heir to their hero, Julius Caesar. On the 16th of January 27 BC, the Senate conferred on Octavian a special honour in recognition of his restoration of the Republic. He was henceforth to be called Augustus, meaning the illustrious one, more of a spiritual than a political title, and certainly not reminiscent of the title of dictator. In addition, he was called Princeps Senatus, again not a dictator, but the principal senator, or the man most entrusted with the protection of the Senate. Yet another title was to prove the most significant for posterity. Imperator Caesar Dive Philius meant the commander Caesar, son of the Deified One in English, linking Augustus to the majesty of Julius Caesar. Historians call him the first Roman Emperor, but in fact the title Imperator didn't specifically refer to his being Emperor in the sense that we think of it today. Imperator really meant the commander of the army, and had been a title confirmed on various generals during the time of the Republic. Because of this, Augustus and his successors up until the accession of the Emperor Diocletian in 284 AD are referred to as the Emperors of the Principate, because contemporaries didn't regard them as emperors, but actually as the Princeps sonatus, the first citizen. Some have seen Octavian's promotion to these curious titles as similar to those conferred on the great fascist dictators of the twentieth century, like Fuhrer for Adolf Hitler or Ilduce, meaning the leader for Mussolini. There is also some similarity with the communist dictators for Princep Sonatus, carries the same brotherly affection afforded to Comrade Stalin. But there was one major difference between Augustus and Hitler Mussolini and Stalin. Unlike them, Augustus brought the greatest period of peace and prosperity that Europe has ever known. So why was the Senate so willing to recognise Octavian as its overlord when it had previously rejected Julius Caesar and murdered him on the floor of the Senate House? The reason was essentially fear. The civil wars that followed Julius Caesar's death had been horrific, not just the bloody fighting of Roman legionary against Roman Legionary at the Battle of Philippi, but Octavian's horrific purge of the Senate. After decades of bloodshed, the whole Roman world just wanted peace. Octavian's particular political genius was that he realized he could deliver this by effectively abolishing the Republic so long as he disguised it in a politically acceptable way. Augustus was the consummate politician. The scene was now set for a political pantomime that would last for over two hundred years. Augustus was the undisputed leader of the Roman world, but nowhere was this officially recognised in the Roman Constitution. This created one major problem succession. During the two hundred years of the Pax Romana, imperial succession was cloaked in a republican veneer. The Senate was meant to have the final choice of who would be the next Princep Senatus. This was somewhat similar to, but also different from the unwritten constitution that still governs the behaviour of the British monarchy today. In Britain, today the monarchy has the power to veto Parliament's choice of Prime Minister, but it is accepted that it will never do this under any circumstances. In Augustus's Rome it was tacitly accepted that the Emperor would choose his own successor, but unlike the British Constitution, it was also expected that his choice would be the one acceptable to the Senate. This raises a question that became a central problem in Roman politics. Was the Emperor really a hereditary title or not? Since Augustus had no legitimate children, this particular question did not need to be answered in his lifetime, for Augustus' successor was his chosen adopted son, Tiberius. Subsequent emperors also adopted their successors until Vespasian was succeeded by his son, and then this became the accepted norm. As we will discuss in later episodes, when the Roman Empire started to fall, its emperors implemented a more autocratic and dynastic style of government that modern historians call the dominate. Although the early emperors after Augustus included some monsters such as Caligula and Nero, Augustus's peculiar semblance of republican democracy masking an imperial iron fist produced a number of enlightened emperors. The so-called Antonine Emperors, in particular the widely admired five good emperors who ruled for nearly a hundred years, from ninety six to one hundred and ninety two AD, including Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, ruled the Roman Empire wisely and justly. Augustus's legacy proved to be surprisingly effective. So how did he achieve this miracle of peace that has subsequently eluded the nations of Europe until the creation of the European Union after the Second World War? One simple answer is that he further strengthened the Roman army so that it was unquestionably the dominant military force of the ancient world, capable of crushing any opponent. And no historian can deny that the mainstay of the Pax Romana's 200 years of peace was the unparalleled power of the Roman army, just as the long period of peace enjoyed by the Western democracies since the end of the Second World War could be ascribed mainly due to the United States spending over $600 billion annually on maintaining the most dominant military machine ever known in human history, so Augustus ensured that the Roman army was the ancient equivalent of the modern US military. Augustus did this by prioritizing the Roman army's needs above all else. He completed its journey into becoming a fully professional organization by making the army into a career for life. He fixed service in the legions at 16 years minimum, to be followed by a further four years in reserve, so a total of 20 years. Army pay was made a top priority for the Roman government. Regular pay was generous, and a huge cash gratuity was paid on completion of 20 years service. This was fixed in his lifetime at 12,000 sesterces, the equivalent of about fourteen years pay, and served as a major attraction for army recruits. Augustus also forbade soldiers to marry, which seems harsh, but reflected his aim to have a mobile military capability unencumbered with long baggage trains of wives and children. In practice, as Augustus' legion settled down in the provinces, the men inevitably did marry local women and bring up families, so that by the end of the second century the Emperor Septimius Severus abolished this restriction which had by then become largely ignored anyway. Augustus's legionaries were not just super fit young men fanatically devoted to war, such as the modern US Navy SEALs or British SAS. They were also good engineers, stonemasons and craftsmen. They could build siege engines, forts, roads, and even great walls that ran for hundreds of miles, like Hadrian's wall in England. Augustus's soldiers were the first professional army in history. They have been represented countless times in books and films wearing segmented armour, the famous Lorica segmentata in Latin, with curved rectangular shields, they have become the standard image of Rome in all its might and glory. And the proof is always in the pudding, for the Roman army wasn't conclusively defeated until the crisis of the third century AD. Indeed, during the long years of Rome's Golden Age, from the first century BC to well into the third century AD, only twice did the Roman legions meet more than their match. First in the last years of the Roman Republic before, of course, Augustus' reign. It was Marcus Crassus, the wealthiest man in Rome and a member of the first triumvirate with Julius Caesar and Pompey, who invaded the Persian Empire in fifty three BC, hoping to emulate Julius Caesar's victories in Gaul, unwisely advancing into the Syrian desert, his legions were surrounded by thousands of Persian horse archers, his legionaries collapsed from heat exhaustion as the skies above them darkened with arrows. Crassus was captured and had molten gold poured down his throat in mockery of his greed. The only other jarring defeat was that of the Roman general Varus, deep in the German forests in nine AD in the Teuterberg Forest. Three Roman legions were annihilated by fierce, freedom loving Germanic tribes near modern Osnabruck in northwestern Germany. The severed heads of the Roman centurions were nailed to trees. The Emperor Augustus is said to have broken down when he heard of the news, wailing repeatedly, Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions. Yet few empires can boast of only two major defeats in over two hundred years, especially when those two defeats were largely inconsequential, since in both cases Rome quickly reasserted its authority over both the Germans and Persians. But the army was only part of the reason for the success of Augustus's reign and the longevity of the early Roman Empire. For the other reason is that Augustus reinvente the idea of Rome as a universal brand, a brand that was called the Pax Romana. If you did, I'd be really grateful as usual if you wanted to subscribe, tell a friend, or best of all, to leave a review. That would be fantastic, thank you. And in the next episode, we'll look at why the Roman Empire was so successful and what the Pax Romana really meant. Thanks for listening and see you next time.