A review by markk
Augustus by Adrian Goldsworthy

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.25

 Ask most people who was the first Roman emperor, and the name you are mostly likely to hear is that of Julius Caesar. Yet for all his prominence in the events surrounding the fall of the Republic, it was not Julius Caesar who became Rome’s first emperor, but his great-nephew Caius Octavius, a man better known to history as Augustus. Named Caesar’s heir in the dictator’s will, Augustus spent over a decade after his great-uncle’s assassination consolidating power through a series of wars and alliances. After establishing himself as Rome’s sole ruler, he received from the Senate the titles of augustus and princeps, which not only confirmed Octavius’s ascendancy but the establishment as well of a new system of rule, one that would endure for centuries after his death. 

Despite these achievements, Augustus’s lengthy reign has not received anywhere near the attention enjoyed by his legendary great uncle and the tumultuous events of the latter man’s life. Part of the reason for this, as Adrian Goldsworthy notes in his excellent biography of the emperor, is due to the uneven amount of information available about it in the surviving literary sources. These he employs with the growing body of physical evidence to provide not just an account of Augustus’s life, but an account as well of how the emperorship emerged to become the new center of power in the Roman Empire. 

To recount Augustus’s life, Goldsworthy divides his book into five parts. Though the first of these covers the years of his upbringing, the paucity of reliable details leads the author to recount instead the contemporaneous events of the civil war and Julius Caesar’s rise to power. Not only does this help Goldsworthy set the context for Caius Octavius’s rise, it underscores the unique set of circumstances required for it. Had Caesar lost to Pompey, it is debatable whether history would even know his grand-nephew’s name; had he avoided or survived assassination, it is possible someone else would have been the beneficiary of Caesar’s contacts and alliances. Instead, Caius Octavius was the inheritor of the bulk of his great-uncle’s vast fortune and patronage network, catapulting him instantly to the front rank of politics. 

Yet Caius Julius Caesar (as Caius Octavius now renamed himself) was just one contender for power in the vacuum caused by his great-uncle’s death. Thirteen years would pass before young Caesar would defeat the last of his enemies in battle to become the sole ruler of the republic. Recounting this process takes up the second and third parts of Goldsworthy’s book, as he details the various campaigns, partnerships, and conspiracies that brought it about. Here he downplays the inevitability of young Caesar’s rise, noting the numerous missteps and defeats that he suffered during this period. In many respects this period proved a learning process, one in which he learned how to better navigate politics and outmaneuver his enemies. Thanks to this experience, by the time of Mark Antony’s death in the aftermath of the battle of Actium in 31 BCE, Caius Julius Caesar had not only secured his power, he had mastered his ability to wield it on the Roman political scene. 

The Senate’s vote of the title of augustus in 27 BCE was thus an acknowledgement of Caius Julius Caesar’s unprecedented status. Though Augustus held a variety of different offices in the years that followed, Goldsworthy makes clear in the final two sections of the book that his real power lay in his control over the military. This he exercised in a peripatetic existence punctuated by campaigns designed to add to Rome’s glory. Augustus was aided in his efforts by a select clique of family and friends with whom he shared power, an arrangement that Goldsworthy notes was virtually unique in Roman history. Yet the deaths of his adopted stepsons, Gaius and Lucius, and the banishment of Agrippa Postumus meant that Augustus soldiered on with the duties of his position right up to his death in 14 CE, aided only by the reluctant support of his successor, Tiberius. 

Goldsworthy recounts all of this with an assuredness born of a thorough command of his subject. His confidence in his conclusions might be greater than his sources can support, but nevertheless speaks to a judgment honed by his considerably familiarity with the era. This he employs to bridge the many gaps in our knowledge of Augustus’s life and reign with speculation grounded in the sources we do have, supplemented by archaeological finds that fill out our understanding in important ways. Conveyed as it is with Goldsworthy’s deft writing style, it all makes for a biography that is a both an enjoyable read and one that is highly recommended for anyone seeking to learn about Rome’s first emperor and his enduring legacy for its empire.