Augustus Caesar

Born Gaius Octavius in Rome. His family is wealthy but not noble. His great-uncle is Julius Caesar, who takes an interest in the boy and eventually names him heir. Nobody expects this sickly teenager to amount to much. Caesar knows something they don't.

Caesar is murdered on the Ides of March. Octavian is 18, studying in Apollonia in present-day Albania. When he learns Caesar's will names him adoptive son and primary heir, his mother and stepfather beg him not to accept. He accepts. He marches to Rome. He is outnumbered, outranked, and underestimated by everyone.

Forms the Second Triumvirate with Mark Antony and Lepidus. They publish proscription lists. 300 senators and 2,000 equestrians are marked for death. Their property is confiscated to fund the war against Caesar's assassins. Cicero, the greatest orator in Rome, is on the list. Antony insists. Augustus agrees.

At Philippi, he and Mark Antony crush the armies of Brutus and Cassius, Caesar's assassins. Cassius falls on his sword after the first engagement. Brutus does the same after the second. The Republic's last defenders are dead. Octavian is 21.

His admiral Agrippa destroys Mark Antony and Cleopatra's fleet at Actium. Antony and Cleopatra flee to Egypt. Both kill themselves the following year. Egypt, the last Hellenistic kingdom, becomes a Roman province and Octavian's personal estate. He is the last man standing. He controls the entire Roman world.

The Senate grants him the title "Augustus" (the revered one). He doesn't call himself king or dictator. He calls himself princeps, first citizen. He keeps the Senate. He keeps the elections. He keeps the republican forms. But he controls the army, the treasury, and half the provinces. The Republic is over. Nobody has to say it out loud.

Granted the title pater patriae, father of the country. He has ruled for 25 years. The Roman Empire stretches from Spain to Syria. The population is roughly 60 million. A census is underway. He has built roads, aqueducts, and forums. "I found Rome a city of bricks," he will later say, "and left it a city of marble."

Dies at Nola, near Naples, at 75. He has ruled Rome for 41 years. His last words, according to Suetonius: "Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit." He'd turned a republic torn by civil war into the most powerful empire on earth. The Senate deifies him. A month bears his name. The age he built, the Pax Romana, will last two centuries.

His stepson Tiberius succeeds him. Not the successor Augustus wanted. His preferred heirs kept dying. His grandson Gaius. His adopted sons Lucius and Gaius Caesar. He outlived them all. The dynasty he founded, the Julio-Claudians, will produce Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Three of the four will be murdered or forced to suicide. Augustus's genius was dying in bed.