![]() ![]() Years of political wrangling and civil war ensued, until finally Octavian, as he became known, emerged triumphant against Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and was named Augustus, "the revered one", by the Roman Senate in 27BC. Despite being still in his teens, Octavius recognised his opportunity and seized the moment: he took on the name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus and started to recruit support from among Caesar's followers and friends. In his will, Caesar adopted Octavius as his son and named him as his principal heir. ![]() He came from a wealthy equestrian family, but his father died when Octavius was just four, and he was only 18 when, in 44BC, his great-uncle Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by conspirators at the Senate house at Rome. He was born Gaius Octavius in 63BC, in the town of Velitrae, south of Rome. Augustus may be the politician's politician: he is also the despot's despot. Well, not quite everybody: Mussolini, maybe, and Hitler. As emperor of Rome, he created, according to Johnson, "an institution that, in many ways, everybody has tried to imitate in the succeeding centuries". Brilliant, shrewd, friendly and affable to all, he was also, needless to say, a megalomaniac, a schemer and a tyrant. Augustus was no Cesc Fábregas, and certainly no Wilf Mannion. "If you wanted to have a first 11 of the world's leading politicians, the most accomplished diplomats and ideologues of all time, you'd have Augustus as your kind of midfield playmaker, captain of the 11." It's a typically charming but utterly misleading comparison. "He was about the greatest politician the world has ever seen," remarked the mayor of London in an interview last year. So how did Augustus do it?Īccording to some, Augustus was simply an inspirational leader – like, say, Boris Johnson. To found an entire civilisation based on a family dynasty is entirely another. 'I f there is anyone who qualifies as the founding father of western civilisation, it is Augustus," writes Anthony Everitt in The First Emperor: Caesar Augustus and the Triumph of Rome (2006). ![]()
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