Classical Roman Empire
Aleksandar Jovanović
Octavian Augustus about His Life
The Roman Republic entered a period of prolonged political crisis that lasted for about a hundred years (from 133 to 31 BCE) when, finally, after a century of civil wars and bloodshed, Octavian Augustus defeated Marc Antony, the last of his opponents, and became the undisputed ruler of the Roman state. While Octavian officially reinstated the Roman Republic, in practice, he accumulated the prerogatives of several different public offices of the state in his own hands, which allowed him to rule as a monarch over the empire. Thus, in modern scholarship as much as in the writings of authors flourishing from the 2nd century CE, Augustus is labelled as the first emperor of Rome. One of the reasons behind Augustus’ rise was the fact that Rome and its people were tired of constant internal conflict and wished to see peace back in the empire. The governing system of the Roman Republic, though suited for Rome back in the days when it was a mere city-state in Italy, was becoming unsuitable for running a Mediterranean Empire. Thus, Augustus started his reign under the official guise of the Roman Republic but set in motion a series of irreversible changes that were to mark the history of Rome for the next 1500 years.
We have been extremely lucky to know how Augustus wished to be remembered as his propagandistic autobiography has survived to this day. Upon his death, Augustus willed his autobiography to be inscribed on temples of the goddess Roma and of himself around the provinces of the Roman Empire. In Italy and the western provinces, the text was available in Latin and in the eastern provinces a Greek version was added to the inscriptions to make the piece more comprehensible to the local populaces. Thus, the first text in history of Rome that was made available throughout the empire with the same content was delivered in both Latin and Greek, a practice that Roman emperors continued in the eastern provinces, and then in the Eastern Roman Empire, all the way until the 7th century CE, when Greek took over as the sole official language of the state. Augustus, then, laid the foundations of the new governing system of Rome, which was to outlive him by over a millennium.
Res Gestae Divi Augusti
In my twentieth year [44 BCE], acting on my own initiative and at my own charges, I raised an army wherewith I brought again liberty to the Republic oppressed by the dominance of a faction. Therefore did the Senate admit me to its own order by honorary decrees, in the consulship of Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius. At the same time they gave unto me rank among the consulars in the expressing of my opinion [in the Senate]; and they gave unto me the imperium. It also voted that I, as propreetor, together with the consuls, should “see to it that the state suffered no harm.” In the same year, too, when both consuls had fallen in battle, the people made me consul and triumvir for the re-establishing of