PREVIEW： Epochs #179 ｜ Octavian： with Apostolic Majesty
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Summary
In this episode of Epochs, we discuss the life and legacy of the Roman Emperor, Octavian, otherwise known as Augustus, and why he is one of the most important figures in history, not only in terms of shaping the Roman Empire, but also in the context of his personal life and political philosophy.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to this episode of Epochs, where I shall be talking all about the life and times and achievements and legacy of Octavian, otherwise known as Augustus.
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And I am joined in conversation with Apostolic Majesty. How are you, sir?
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Hello, Beau. It's wonderful to be back and wonderful to have an opportunity to discuss this very important topic.
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Yeah, and it is a pivotal topic, isn't it? I mean, Augustus, I think, is one of those people in history who kind of towers over history.
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There's no way to sort of deny it. You know, someone on the par with Alexander or George Washington or, I mean, arguably, he's one of the most pivotal people in all of history.
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I would make that argument. And hopefully in this conversation, we'll let people know why we think that, why most historians and scholars think that.
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So before we sort of kick off, what are your sort of overriding thoughts and feelings about the man?
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Because I suppose there are two ways to look at him. I have this in mind.
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There's that he's sort of the kindly old grandpa, the version of him in Robert Graves' Augustus, Robert Graves' I, Claudius, where he's like a magic granddad type loving, benevolent figure.
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Or he's like one of the most ruthless, cynical warlords of all time.
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Well, I think I'm going to be very boring and say that he represents both aspects.
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You may see them as a sort of totally contradictory, but I would say on the one half, one aspect represents wrath and the other aspect represents wisdom.
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And I think the brilliance of Augustus as being able to judge when it is necessary to be wrathful and when it is necessary to be wise, and thus explains not just his achievement in terms of solidifying and transitioning the Republic to the Empire, but also in terms of his longevity and indeed his legacy.
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But in my sort of own particular coming at this recently, obviously, I've been thinking about Augustus for a very long time.
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I don't think anyone who is familiar with history can ignore a figure such as Augustus or Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great or the other examples that you bring up.
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But in the case of Augustus, I was, for various reasons, I was going through the political philosophy of Dante Alighieri.
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And in order to try and justify some sort of, you know, you can say grand arc of, you know, I hate to say imperial apologetics, but he was trying to conceive of as some sort of grand metaphysic of the Roman Empire, continuing on into the medieval period.
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And his justification for that was that the reason Christ was born during the reign of the emperor Augustus was that it was the most perfect reign in all of human history for which to have come into the world.
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And thereby the authority of the empire was the only authority which was secular and non-Christian that could judge and sentence Christ to death.
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So in terms of trying to legitimate a system like Augustan rule, that's a medieval perspective.
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You would think, of course, you know, many Catholics would simply dismiss Augustus as a pagan.
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But no, there is such a, you can say, veneration of Augustus that stands through the test of time on the one hand, in terms of permeating into post-Roman forms of government, into the system of the church, but also into Republican forms of government.
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You can say that Augustus represents this great sort of political catch-all where his legacy is sort of sifted through and various political sort of figures pick one aspect they want to choose and another aspect they want to choose.
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Because you can look at Augustus and say he is the beginning of divine right monarchy.
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You can also look at Augustus and say he represents some sort of constitutional president for the current US political system or something like that.
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You can bring in so many different articles and arguments.
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Of course, there is an element of truth in all of these, but you wouldn't be entirely correct for advocating for any of them exclusively either.
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So obviously, I think you can understand, given the whole range of topics we can sort of invoke here, why it is necessary, I think, to understand Augustus as a pivotal figure in history.
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Gosh, yeah, absolutely pivotal, absolutely pivotal.
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I mean, of course, he represents that crossover from republic to empire, if nothing else.
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And as you say, you know, I think he's a very, certainly he's a very complicated figure, mercurial even, certainly a great, great politician.
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And a couple of things to point out is that, of course, his reign was very long.
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You know, he says in the age of 19, he raised he raised an army to put down a faction and free the state from a tyranny.
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So like Alexander, got to start very, very young and then didn't die till he was old and ruled the whole time.
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So it's a very, very long reign, almost too long.
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I've heard that said about a few different people, like Edward III or someone.
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It's a bit too long where a whole generation passes away and there's sort of a break in continuity in things.
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Anyway, one thing, one quick thing before we sort of go any further, just to say a quick word I would like to about the sources.
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So I mentioned a few weeks ago, talking about Sulla, that there's actually very little about Sulla.
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You could read everything there is to read from the primary sources in one day on Sulla.
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There's the life of Plutarch and there's a few other bits and bobs, not much else.
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But with Augustus, we've actually got loads, haven't we?
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There's a Plutarch, there's Suetonius, even though Tacitus doesn't do it in great detail,
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still talks about him here and there quite a lot still.
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You know, Cassius Dio, there's a massive bit in Cassius Dio.
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So even there's bits and bobs from Cicero for his very, very early life.
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So there's actually, we've actually got lots of material on Augustus.
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That's not even to mention people like Horace or Juvenile or Virgil.
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So we happen to know loads about the life and times and reign of Augustus.
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It's like more than we know about people a thousand years later, often.
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So it's actually, it's in the full light of history.
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We're actually almost an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the sources.
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But I was one of those people, Augustus would probably be my specialist subject if I went
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on Mastermind of being fascinated by Augustus ever since I was, I don't know, 16 or 17 or
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Perhaps it was, perhaps it was the idea that he was such a young man when he became almost
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But yeah, so to focus on the thing about how pivotal he is, just a couple of examples.
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In later Roman history, often when you'd have multiple emperors, the Augustus was the senior
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You know, just that alone gives an idea that that honorific became the preeminent honorific.
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And that he was able to, as I mentioned, he was able to bridge that gap between a republic,
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a really sort of unstable republic in the age of Marius and Sulla and Pompey and Caesar.
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And by the end of his reign, someone like Tiberius, not even a blood relative, is able to set
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up, which without any doubt, a monarchy by that point.
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So I think if you mentioned in the medieval period, you know, he's thought of as in some
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way sort of a perfect ruler or he played his hand perfectly in all sorts of ways.
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And there's very few people in history, aren't there, that you can say, you know, they get
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to die peacefully in their bed after decades and decades of a completely tumultuous reign.
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So, yeah, I mean, yeah, if you want to say any few words on that or.
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Yes, just to before we sort of get into the events, just to just comment on that, I think
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one of the things you and I are probably going to have most to talk about in terms of being
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able to dissect is what it really means when we talk about the transition from the republic
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to the empire. Because, of course, that entire transition to which we can even identify what is
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being transitioned here is Augustus. It is the person of Augustus. It's the positions he
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accumulates and it is his personal legacy. You cannot conceive of any sort of even sort of
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abstract notion of going from republic to monarchy without the figure of Augustus.
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And given the fact that that is going to be the template for all of, you can say, Western
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Christian monarchy going forth, which then would transition into, say, more neoclassical
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republican institutions in the 17th and 18th century. That in itself is one of the great
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moments in history. And really, I would also say, it's impossible to separate the man from
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the history in many ways that so many people are destined to demonize or underplay the role
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of individual agency within history. In the case of Augustus, it's incontrovertible. You cannot see
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the progression of not just Roman history, but European history and world history without the life and
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career of the man. So that is what I hope to dissect, what exactly that transition means and what
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Augustus intended by that and what ultimately his legacy was going forward. Yeah, so I'm happy to
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They call his settlement, his form of government, the principate, don't they? So yeah, historians,
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you know, love to put things in nice, neat boxes. But they do say, you know, that the Augustan era is
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just a new, an entirely new settlement for the Roman world. And it does seem fair. But yeah, the idea,
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often people say he's the first emperor. You know, some say that someone like Caesar might have been
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the first emperor. Others say, no, it wasn't until Vespasian, when he's truly an emperor, does away with
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the idea of being a princeps, a first citizen, is a true emperor. And others put it even later. But
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you know, you know, so anyway, anyway, we could go on and on and on about that transition and what
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it is. But let's dive into it then. So I suppose if we go through sort of vaguely chronologically and
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talk about all the repercussions as we go along, I think the first thing to mention about Augustus
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or any great figure, because you're absolutely right, without him, history would be different.
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You know, if Alexander dies when he's 21, all of history is different. If Augustus dies when he's 25
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or something, all of history is different, right? Napoleon dies just before he becomes emperor,
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all of his subsequent history is different. So it's that sort of important. So when he's young,
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his sort of formative years, he's one of those people where his own family is, they're not plebeian,
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but they're certainly not fantastically wealthy and rich. But his great uncle is Julius Caesar,
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right? So there's someone in your family, not exactly like your father, but someone relatively
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close to you in your family is unbelievably powerful and important and rich among the first men in the
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world, in the Roman world. So that would have been his formative years growing up. And we know that
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Caesar didn't have, well, unless you count Cleopatra's son, Caesar didn't have a clear, clear heir.
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And so I think maybe it's important to just say a few words or spend a couple of moments thinking about
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what it must have been like for Octavian as he was then, or Octavius, growing up knowing that your
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great uncle is this, this figure, this great figure, and he's sort of also in trouble. And there are also
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civil wars about it going on all at the same time. What's your impression of sort of the world that
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Augustus grew up in and what effect that must have had on him? But just quickly say, because by the
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time he is 18, 19, it seems he's absolutely ready to jump onto the stage of history and start being an
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actor in his own right and playing his hand boldly. To do that when you're 18, 19 years old, what must have
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his slightly earlier years have been? What must have there been like? Well, he was part of the Octavianus
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sort of branch of the Julii gens, which was a very sort of insignificant branch of the family, which
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Julius Caesar, albeit Caesar, was also a branch of the Julii gens. His was far more distinguished than that of
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the paternal ancestry of Octavianus. And indeed, Octavian itself is really a pejorative.
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If we're trying to understand the man. So I find it interesting that you look at Augustus and then
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you look at Octavian, because if you look at that, it doesn't actually really make much sense
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in terms of this random, you know, boy of an equestrian rank suddenly becoming or being given
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a title, which is I'll get into what the title means later on when we arrive at it. But I think it's
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really important to note that he becomes Caesar before he becomes Augustus, when he inherits essentially
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the title and the legacy when it comes from Julius Caesar. But when Octavius is born in the year 63 AD,
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the link to Caesar is through, sorry, BC, thank you, is through his mother, Aetia, who is the niece of
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Caesar. And that is a time where the first informal understanding, the triumvirate has been formed between
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Caesar, Pompey the Great, and Crassus. A few years later, Caesar will begin his conquest in Gaul.
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But what does this all mean, like in the grand scheme of Roman history? Because Caesar and Octavian, later
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Caesar and Augustus, are really coming in at the tail end of a system which is unraveling and falling
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apart and just evolving into civil wars. I think it's really fair to say that the Roman Empire had
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been in the state of the almost perpetual crisis since probably the Third Punic Wars and the sack of
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Carthage around the year 150 BC. Because after then, the senatorial class becomes, you could say, more
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distant, more corrupt. The Roman legions expand. The Marian reforms essentially lead to these, you
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know, barracks rulers and coup after coup. I mean, Sulla, Hugh mentioned earlier as having, you know,
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not much sources that we can ultimately attribute to him, or his reign, or sorry, not reign life. Again,
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these words actually have major connotations in terms of understanding what does it mean to have a
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reign, even if you don't really have a monarchical system, which is recognizable at that point. All of
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these things are sort of interesting to consider. But Sulla is another interesting figure that you can
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later bring back in terms of what he means to Augustus, because he's a man who is a great warlord.
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He fights Mithridates, the king of Pontus. He comes back, he launches a series of prescriptions,
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a terror purge, essentially killing off many of his political enemies. And then he attempts, after having done
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all that, to correct the flaws in the republican system, after serving as dictator, he then retires.
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But shortly afterwards, his legacy unravels through, again, another series of conflicts.
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So during the time you have the birth of Augustus, and the creation of the first triumvirate, and his
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rather distant connection, genetic link to Julius Caesar as his great uncle. When you see the creation of the
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triumvirate, it's basically an admission that the republican institutions mean very little.
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It doesn't really matter who is Pontifex Maximus, or consul, or all of these other positions,
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because true power is being wielded by these either incredibly wealthy men, like Crassus, these men with
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great personal prestige, like Pompey the Great, who having, of course, basically completed the legacy of
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Sulla, through his consolidation of the East. And then we have an up-and-comer who is distinguished
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by his lineage, but also by his ambitions, which is Julius Caesar, who begins his career by taking over
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three important provinces in the north of Italy and southern Gaul, and then uses that essentially as a
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springboard to, you can almost say, it begins as a series of conflicts used to justify the security
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of Rome's northern borders. And then it rapidly becomes a personal campaign of conquest, where the
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legality of such actions is increasingly drawn into question. Not only does he expand the Roman
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borders to the Rhine, not only does he defeat Vercingetorix by constantly expanding, basically,
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the remit of who was at war with Rome, who was an enemy. The Caesarean legions, also the first to
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cross over into Britain, the first to build a bridge to cross over into the Rhine, all of these expeditions.
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And of course, the more powerful he gets, the more antithetical he seems to the Republican institutions,
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crossing the Rubicon effectively as a decision to declare war on the Republic, to seize it by force.
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And from the year 49 BC, up into the year 45 BC, he is really fighting constant wars with
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a whole series of figures, the most prominent of being Pompey the Great, who he defeats the Battle
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of Pharsalus. So within this entire scheme, you mentioned the idea of Octavian being the heir
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of Julius Caesar. And I just want to reference that again, because what does it really mean to be the
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heir of Julius Caesar? I mean, political heirs didn't really exist in Rome at that time. You had
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a huge veneration of the family, of lineages, and your lineage and your status in Roman society,
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whether you were a pleb, whether you were a question, whether you were a patrician, etc.,
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could allow you to appeal to certain ranks and positions, such as being a member of the Senate.
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But nevertheless, so much of the Roman political system is built up on personal achievement,
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imperator, the conquering general, the ability essentially to not just kill the enemies of
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Rome, but protect the citizens of Rome. So if we're going to talk about Augustus as an heir,
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essentially, what Augustus effectively receives when Caesar is assassinated in 44 is a name.
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And a contested legacy in terms of the will, because ultimately the will becomes not so much
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in terms of like a basis for power in and of itself as a political office, but the will basically
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allows him to have a foundation from which to start selling off his estates and begin building an army.
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But what's significant about this is that really Octavianus, up until the age of 1819, really doesn't
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feature prominently in Roman history at all. The whole notion of him being an heir is really quite
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surprising. It's something that is effectively sort of presented during the course of when the will is
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read out during the funeral. And figures like Cicero and even Mark Antony have, you know, struck at this,
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you know, this, because he's not also the only blood relative of Julius Caesar either. He has other
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nephews. So the idea that this particular child, effectively, who had only undergone his ceremony of
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attaining manhood a few years earlier, should suddenly inherit the name is rather remarkable. But so it's,
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that is in itself remarkable. The fact that he inherited the legacy of Caesar, not the offices of
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Caesar, not all of the, all the legions of Caesar either. None of the things that would allow him
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to take over power and begin ruling at the age of 19. But he inherits that legacy and more critically,
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he decides to assume that legacy. It is a conscious decision that Augustus takes that
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I am going to take my uncle's name and I am going to become Caesar. It is something no one expected him to
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do. Basically, everyone thought he was a boy who had this position, again, inherited by accident.
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He has very little allies. Mark Antony doesn't take him seriously. The former sort of optimatists don't
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take him seriously, i.e. the elite ranks of the, you know, senatorial class. Cicero doesn't take him
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seriously. Even his, well, what I found fascinating, actually rereading this subject, is that even his
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mother, Aetia, encouraged him to not accept the legacy of Caesar, because it would basically place a
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massive target on him. So that really is the context that Julius Caesar and his legacy essentially
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could have died when the, quote unquote, liberators assassinated him. And then Cassius and Brutus could
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have consolidated a new regime. It wouldn't have saved the Republic, almost likely, and, you know, very likely,
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but we could have seen just a perpetuation of the civil conflict that we saw before the rise of
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Julius Caesar. Octavius could have decided to back down, or he could have been assassinated very early,
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and all of history would have looked entirely different. So it's not just the fact that this
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boy inherited his position, rather he decided to seize the legacy, not simply inherit the legacy.
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Absolutely, that's a remarkable thing. I mean, really sort of almost unbelievably remarkable.
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There's lots of times in history when someone very, very young has to step into the breach,
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and they're completely ineffective, and you can't really blame them, really. I mean, William the
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Conqueror jumps to mind being extremely young. If you haven't got protectors who are completely on your
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side, it'd be very, very difficult. But Octavian seems to pick up the mantle completely on his own.
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So yeah, the idea that he inherits the name, so he becomes sort of
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Peter Familius, he'd become legally the head of that household. Well, you know, good luck in the
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world in which he is existing in at that moment. But the thing that I think is even more interesting,
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or not more interesting, but the thing that's truly, truly remarkable, is that he was able to
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convert it very quickly. You mentioned that there's a famous line from Cicero saying,
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this boy is to be sort of placated for a while and then just swept aside. He can't be, you know,
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it's just, there's no way he can be a true player on this stage. It's just, there's no way that's
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possible. But it was. So again, there's that idea of what forged him. So all his childhood really,
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I imagine from when his first real memories kick in, when he's first sort of old enough to be aware
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of what's going on around him, I don't know when that was for you, but you can't be much younger than
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seven, eight, nine, ten years old, when you're able to really understand what's going on.
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Already at that point, the Catiline conspiracy is in the past. His great uncle is in Gaul doing that thing.
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And then when he's going through his, the age, the years, when he's old enough to sort of truly
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understand what's going on when you're 14, 15, 16, those are the years when Caesar's fighting Pompey
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and fighting all over the Roman world for supremacy and then winning and then ruling as a dictator,
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well, in the end, dictator for life. Those are the years when he's, you know, when he's 15,
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16, 16, 17, 18, are those years. So he sees how it's done or rather how it's not done.
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He could, you know, what an education that is. You know, talk about being thrown into, you know,
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baptism of fire, being thrown in the deep end, immediately being, you know, not involved
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politically, but being right next to the actor of the age and right next to him. So there's a few
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things he did when he, I think when he was 16, he went out to Spain and visited Caesar while Caesar
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was campaigning in Spain. It was very, it was very traditional, wasn't it? When you, when you become a
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man, you effectively become a camp follower and you're expected essentially to take up military
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responsibility alongside your relatives. But again, it's quite remarkable, isn't it, to become
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nothing more than a camp follower to the, to be the driver of a legacy of the magnitude of Caesar
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within three years. And this is really what's startling. It's interesting that you brought up
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Cicero because you would have thought based on what you just said, wouldn't you, about his entire
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sort of formative experience being left in the legacy of Caesar, either in the conquest of Gaul or
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the period of dictatorship from 44 until, sorry, 49 until 44 BC, that a more primitive and you can say
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brutish character would have looked at that and said, oh, I just want to be Caesar. I just want to be
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the dictator. I want to assume power and I want everyone to submit to me. But part of the genius
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of Augustus is the fact that he, from a very early age, has a clear conception of his role
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within the grand scale, grand scope of Roman history. You know, it's something that Cicero,
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of course, is obsessed with in terms of understanding the past, in terms of understanding yourself.
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Of course, Caesar turned that into his great sort of political rallying cry, to some extent,
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the importance of lineage. But of course, when it comes to Augustus, one of the first things he does
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is not simply go out as we imagine and take vengeance against the murders of his adopted
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father, Julius Caesar. But instead, he occupies this halfway house position where he actually goes after
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Mark Antony. He becomes the champion of the Roman elite and he panders almost excessively to Cicero.
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And so it's remarkable in the way that you bring up that famous quote. He is basically to be used
00:26:53.880
as an ornament and discarded. We can exploit the name, can't we? We understand that it may be very
00:27:01.080
useful for our purposes to take the heir of Caesar and then use him as a weapon of the liberators,
00:27:07.000
effectively, and then discard him should he actually begin to assume that Caesar would mean anything as a
00:27:13.080
political tool in the long term. So that is very much Cicero's thinking. But it's very interesting
00:27:19.880
that Augustus wants to appeal to both legacies early on at the beginning. He wants to appeal to
00:27:26.040
the legacy of his father and he wants to appeal to the legacy of the man who brought down the Catiline
00:27:31.320
conspiracy. So to him, as we later see with maybe Mark Antony, in the same way that he's looking at,
00:27:38.840
you know, acts of vengeance, he's also looking for new Catiline conspiracies, essentially. So at the one
00:27:44.520
hand, he's furthering the legacy of political consolidation of his father, yet he's also saving
00:27:51.960
the Republic. Two themes which would seem to be, you know, mutually exclusive, but ultimately you can say
00:27:58.760
they form part of the remarkable legacy of Augustus. It's only much later, you know, a year or so later,
00:28:06.360
that having essentially established this position, and you mentioned again, remarkable thing about
00:28:12.520
how he's able to achieve so much power so early. One of the many sort of facets of Augustus that
00:28:18.680
allowed him to stay in power for so long was his copious generosity. It wasn't simply enough to
00:28:26.840
hang on and receive the estates of Julius Caesar. You had to purchase loyalty, you had to purchase the
00:28:32.840
legions, you had to outbid Mark Antony whenever you were appealing effectively to the loyalty of
00:28:37.880
the same soldiers. And it was his willingness to use the estates of Julius Caesar as a political legacy,
00:28:45.000
effectively, to invest that into buying the loyalty of his former legionnaires. That very early on makes
00:28:51.080
him a necessity for people like Cicero, but then allows him to ally with people like Mark Antony,
00:28:57.400
and basically go on and achieve the act of vengeance against the murderers of his adoptive
00:29:03.880
father, the liberators. But of course, that means that's another contradiction, because
00:29:08.600
you have the legions, you have set up a power base. Now you understand that Cicero is not going to be a
00:29:15.320
strong ally for you. You understand that you have almost as an act of political necessity to take the
00:29:21.320
fight to Brutus and Cassius. And yet on the other hand, you have to pander, you can say, to the
00:29:27.880
excessive brutality of someone like a Mark Antony, who wants to go back into Rome and commit massive
00:29:33.240
prescriptions. So Caesar, rather than preventing the murder of all of these Roman elites, basically
00:29:39.160
turns a blind eye and lets it happen again. So on the one hand, you can say he's trying to appeal to the
00:29:44.360
legacy of clemency of Julius Caesar, yet also he has to open up and become this ruffle figure in terms of
00:29:49.880
being able to allow him to continue down the path of power.
00:29:54.440
So a couple of quick things. One, you've mentioned Caesar as his father a couple of times there, but
00:30:00.440
we already said that he's his great uncle. So a couple of things to mention, just to go back to
00:30:04.360
that moment in time when Caesar's assassinated, and in his will is made clear that he's adopted,
00:30:11.560
sort of formally adopted Octavian as his son and heir. So at that point then, Octavian can say,
00:30:19.560
my father was Julius Caesar, the divine Julius Caesar. They sort of deified Caesar after him.
00:30:28.120
And of course then, it's not just that he is Caesar, he is the son of a god as well.
00:30:34.040
Right, so that's exactly what I was going to say. So Octavian goes through many,
00:30:37.880
many different titles and names, many, during his life. The last one is Augustus. But yeah,
00:30:43.720
at that point he calls himself, what is it, what is the Latin? Divi Felis or something.
00:30:53.640
The son of a god, son of the divine Julius, basically. And so if we could go back briefly
00:31:00.760
to that moment in time. So he knows that he's very, very close to Caesar, literally gone on
00:31:09.560
campaign with him and must have spent a fair amount of time, or at least a fair bit, a little
00:31:14.280
bit of time in his company. And Caesar, Julius Caesar, obviously took a shine to him, otherwise he
00:31:20.280
wouldn't have left what he did to him in his will. But yet there is Caesareon in Egypt, there is that
00:31:27.800
boy there by Cleopatra. And so again, it must have been obvious to say, an unbelievable shock
00:31:37.240
when Octavian hears that Uncle Julius, great Uncle Julius has just been murdered.
00:31:43.560
He doesn't necessarily know what the will is going to say. He might fear, at least for a moment or two,
00:31:51.880
that his assassins are going to come after him or the whole family, but they don't. So one, we've
00:31:59.240
already said, it's absolutely remarkable that he was able to step up to the plate to use parlance of
00:32:05.080
our time and start acting as a political player in his own right. But beyond that, to be able to
00:32:15.400
not only have the guts or the balls to try, but then to play his hand very, very well. So in the first
00:32:24.920
instance, to realise that he's got multiple enemies. Of course, there's the people that just
00:32:32.920
murdered Caesar, so Brutus and others, but also to realise that Mark Antony, Octavian, is going to have
00:32:43.160
to have a power struggle for supremacy within the Caesarean camp. Because Mark Antony obviously thinks
00:32:50.360
of himself as the natural, not legal heir, but the natural successor to Caesar when it comes to
00:32:58.920
legions, or just being ahead of that faction from now on. Octavian has got two completely separate
00:33:11.960
factions that he will have to fight against if he is to win, ultimately. So there's two things. One,
00:33:18.680
just the naus, the guts to even try to do this. And then secondly, a political acumen.
00:33:26.040
Where does this 18, 19-year-old kid get a political acumen to realise, OK, I will exploit the name of
00:33:33.720
Caesar. I'll start calling myself the son of a god. OK, do that. I have to go through the legal
00:33:39.400
battles of actually getting the money to actually do it. And when I do, to pay off the legion. Again,
00:33:45.560
the political acumen or the political ability to realise, to see with sort of a laser-like focus,
00:33:51.720
I've got to pay the legions. I can't just take that for myself or squander it or do other things with
00:33:58.040
it. The legions are absolutely important. Again, to play Cicero like a fiddle, really. Oh, you think
00:34:05.400
you're going to manipulate me? No, I'm manipulating you, if anything. And then again, to have like,
00:34:13.400
again, the political ability to realise that very quickly or almost straight away, to call out the
00:34:19.080
murderers and say, you know, I'm not going to have that, you know, not straight away, but fairly quickly,
00:34:27.320
to say that that's a line in the sand that needs to be dealt with. Because he gets himself created
00:34:34.360
console very quickly. Is it within a year or is it two years before he winds up as sort of
00:34:43.400
manipulated events so that he can be console completely illegally? He's not old enough.
00:34:48.440
He hasn't gone through the Curse of Sonorum remotely. So anyway, I just think there's two
00:34:53.720
things that are absolutely remarkable. One, to have the balls to even try this. And two, to have the
00:34:59.960
political ability to not immediately fail, right? And he's got people around him like Mycenas and
00:35:07.400
Agrippa, but they're about his age. They're not much older or anything. How he wasn't murdered by
00:35:14.760
somebody in the first year or two is incredible, right? To watch the full video, please become a