The Life of Augustine Caesar

Augustine Caesar is remembered for a long time of stability in Rome in which he expanded the empire to include a substantial amount of territory. He is also remembered as one of the greatest emperors in Rome’s history, and so he was.

Octavian was the grand nephew of Julius Caesar, he came onto the scene after the assassination of his grand uncle, and he was named as Cesar’s heir, therefore he would receive three quarters of Caesars estate. Mark Antony, a powerful friend of Caesar had hoped to be his heir but this was not so, the senate was nervous about him taking over the dictatorship and decided to use the young Octavian to get rid of him. After this occurred Octavian realized that the senate had used him and was not happy, he decided to team up with the troubled Mark Antony and a third man named Lepidus who had been closely associated with Caesar and together they formed The Second Triumvirate. Once the Senate realized what they were dealing with, they decided to appease the three men, so they offered Octavian the position of Dictator For life which he readily agreed to. Eventually the Second Triumvirate broke up because some of the things that brought the three of them together in the first place had disappeared, and one member had died. Emperor Octavian made several big changes and also organized a plan to hunt down those who had killed Caesar, he then falsely accused wealthy Romans and took their estates to pay for his plan, and so all the assassins were killed.

In his life as Emperor, Octavian was viewed as one of Rome’s greatest leaders, he was a successful emperor, but regardless of his popularity he was not the fairest emperor of Rome, as stated before, he stole peoples money after accusing them falsely, he was no friend of the wealthy, they were usually the ones he stole from, much the same as it is today. As Octavian grew older he considered simply retiring to private life and stepping down, but he decided that if he did that civil war would again break out and since this had been happening for almost a century he couldn’t just leave like that, but he also knew that Rome needed a dictator with all the power in one man to rule properly, however the population would view that as tyranny, and eventually he decided to figure his problem out through trial and error. In 27 BC he approached the senate and offered to relinquish his power as Emperor stating that the empire has been stabilized and that there was no more need for a dictator, following this the senate offered Octavian’s power back and he refused and they went back and forth until he finally agreed to accept the power. The Senate did this because they were afraid that if he left someone who was oppressive might step in.

Octavian had many military feats, he enlarged Rome’s territory and put down revolts, eventually he was given control over the areas where the majority of the Roman Army resided, in other words the senate had basically given him absolute power, but they did it through giving him power over these areas, that way it was subtle enough so that the people would not notice it, as far as they were concerned all the power was in the senate. With his new power Octavian was now known as Augustine Caesar, he did not entirely embrace the title but everyone called him by it so he accepted. Near the end of his Life Augustine focused on restoring morality and religion in Rome, he believed that Rome’s success was due to the gods and that they should be honored even more, so he restored the shrines and encouraged their worship. He also developed something called the Augustine settlement which suppressed promiscuity in the empire, he even banished his own daughter who was involved in such things, he also banished a writer who educated people on how to seduce married women.
            Augustine died in A.D. 14 having secured and reformed the empire. Like many Emperors, Augustine had his scandals, but overall taking into consideration what he did for Rome in stabilizing and expanding land and morality, as well as economy, I would say he was definitely one of the