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Linda Harkins's Reviews > Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor
Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor
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This book is an audacious attempt to cover in only 327 pages the rise to power and reign of Rome's first emperor. Not all my questions were answered, but I have a better understanding of the period having read this biography.
The author quickly introduces Augustus as Octavian, the handsome and astute great-nephew of Julius Caesar. Trained in public administration by Caesar, Octavian was a person of delicate health who never became the warrior that his great-uncle was. In fact, he leaned heavily upon his friends, Agrippa and Maecenas, to assist him in all military endeavors.
It was in 27 BC that Octavian was given a new name--Imperator Caesar Augustus--but told everyone to call him princeps (leading citizen). Amici Caesaris (friends of Caesar) included Virgil, Livy the historian, and the rotund little poet we know as Horace. Augustus (the revered one) never included Ovid in his intimate circle due, at least in part, to the fact that Ovid exposed the emperor's sexual rapacity and soon found himself exiled on the Black Sea.
Augustus may have been less intelligent than Julius Caesar, but proved wiser. He installed autocracy with the consent of "the independent-minded elites" and brought peace and order to Rome during his reign of 44 years.
The author quickly introduces Augustus as Octavian, the handsome and astute great-nephew of Julius Caesar. Trained in public administration by Caesar, Octavian was a person of delicate health who never became the warrior that his great-uncle was. In fact, he leaned heavily upon his friends, Agrippa and Maecenas, to assist him in all military endeavors.
It was in 27 BC that Octavian was given a new name--Imperator Caesar Augustus--but told everyone to call him princeps (leading citizen). Amici Caesaris (friends of Caesar) included Virgil, Livy the historian, and the rotund little poet we know as Horace. Augustus (the revered one) never included Ovid in his intimate circle due, at least in part, to the fact that Ovid exposed the emperor's sexual rapacity and soon found himself exiled on the Black Sea.
Augustus may have been less intelligent than Julius Caesar, but proved wiser. He installed autocracy with the consent of "the independent-minded elites" and brought peace and order to Rome during his reign of 44 years.
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