The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #179 ｜ Octavian： with Apostolic Majesty

00:00:00.160 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.

00:00:11.360 And I am joined in conversation with Apostolic Majesty. How are you, sir?

00:00:16.500 Hello, Beau. It's wonderful to be back and wonderful to have an opportunity to discuss this very important topic.

00:00:21.980 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.

00:00:29.240 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.

00:00:40.140 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.

00:00:49.540 So before we sort of kick off, what are your sort of overriding thoughts and feelings about the man?

00:00:55.180 Because I suppose there are two ways to look at him. I have this in mind.

00:00:58.540 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.

00:01:14.460 Or he's like one of the most ruthless, cynical warlords of all time.

00:01:17.600 So what's your overall impression of the man?

00:01:21.600 Well, I think I'm going to be very boring and say that he represents both aspects.

00:01:27.280 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.

00:01:37.140 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.

00:01:59.640 But in my sort of own particular coming at this recently, obviously, I've been thinking about Augustus for a very long time.

00:02:06.920 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.

00:02:15.980 But in the case of Augustus, I was, for various reasons, I was going through the political philosophy of Dante Alighieri.

00:02:24.500 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.

00:02:40.780 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.

00:02:56.160 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. 0.97

00:03:04.400 So in terms of trying to legitimate a system like Augustan rule, that's a medieval perspective.

00:03:12.140 You would think, of course, you know, many Catholics would simply dismiss Augustus as a pagan.

00:03:16.500 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.

00:03:31.900 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.

00:03:46.200 Because you can look at Augustus and say he is the beginning of divine right monarchy.

00:03:51.700 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.

00:03:59.600 You can bring in so many different articles and arguments.

00:04:03.300 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.

00:04:10.560 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.

00:04:21.900 Gosh, yeah, absolutely pivotal, absolutely pivotal.

00:04:24.760 I mean, of course, he represents that crossover from republic to empire, if nothing else.

00:04:30.960 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.

00:04:39.040 And a couple of things to point out is that, of course, his reign was very long.

00:04:44.500 He started off when he was like 19.

00:04:47.200 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.

00:04:56.100 So like Alexander, got to start very, very young and then didn't die till he was old and ruled the whole time.

00:05:02.580 So it's a very, very long reign, almost too long.

00:05:07.120 I've heard that said about a few different people, like Edward III or someone.

00:05:10.120 It's a bit too long where a whole generation passes away and there's sort of a break in continuity in things.

00:05:18.400 Or maybe it's not too long.

00:05:19.640 Maybe it needed to be that long.

00:05:22.060 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.

00:05:29.540 So I mentioned a few weeks ago, talking about Sulla, that there's actually very little about Sulla.

00:05:34.540 You could read everything there is to read from the primary sources in one day on Sulla.

00:05:40.580 There's the life of Plutarch and there's a few other bits and bobs, not much else.

00:05:43.680 But with Augustus, we've actually got loads, haven't we?

00:05:46.840 There's a Plutarch, there's Suetonius, even though Tacitus doesn't do it in great detail,

00:05:51.880 still talks about him here and there quite a lot still.

00:05:55.500 You know, Cassius Dio, there's a massive bit in Cassius Dio.

00:05:58.820 So even there's bits and bobs from Cicero for his very, very early life.

00:06:02.960 Cicero mentions him here or there.

00:06:05.360 So there's actually, we've actually got lots of material on Augustus.

00:06:09.680 That's not even to mention people like Horace or Juvenile or Virgil.

00:06:14.400 So we happen to know loads about the life and times and reign of Augustus.

00:06:21.340 It's like more than we know about people a thousand years later, often.

00:06:26.980 So it's actually, it's in the full light of history.

00:06:30.720 We're actually almost an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the sources.

00:06:35.040 So that's nice.

00:06:35.860 But I was one of those people, Augustus would probably be my specialist subject if I went

00:06:42.260 on Mastermind of being fascinated by Augustus ever since I was, I don't know, 16 or 17 or

00:06:47.580 something.

00:06:49.880 Perhaps it was, perhaps it was the idea that he was such a young man when he became almost

00:06:57.200 an autocrat.

00:06:59.900 But yeah, so to focus on the thing about how pivotal he is, just a couple of examples.

00:07:04.440 In later Roman history, often when you'd have multiple emperors, the Augustus was the senior

00:07:12.720 emperor.

00:07:14.760 You know, just that alone gives an idea that that honorific became the preeminent honorific.

00:07:23.800 And that he was able to, as I mentioned, he was able to bridge that gap between a republic,

00:07:32.280 a really sort of unstable republic in the age of Marius and Sulla and Pompey and Caesar.

00:07:37.980 And by the end of his reign, someone like Tiberius, not even a blood relative, is able to set

00:07:44.460 up, which without any doubt, a monarchy by that point.

00:07:48.100 So I think if you mentioned in the medieval period, you know, he's thought of as in some

00:07:56.820 way sort of a perfect ruler or he played his hand perfectly in all sorts of ways.

00:08:05.100 And there's very few people in history, aren't there, that you can say, you know, they get

00:08:08.200 to die peacefully in their bed after decades and decades of a completely tumultuous reign.

00:08:17.280 So, yeah, I mean, yeah, if you want to say any few words on that or.

00:08:23.260 Yes, just to before we sort of get into the events, just to just comment on that, I think

00:08:28.900 one of the things you and I are probably going to have most to talk about in terms of being

00:08:34.120 able to dissect is what it really means when we talk about the transition from the republic

00:08:40.080 to the empire. Because, of course, that entire transition to which we can even identify what is

00:08:47.640 being transitioned here is Augustus. It is the person of Augustus. It's the positions he

00:08:54.200 accumulates and it is his personal legacy. You cannot conceive of any sort of even sort of

00:09:00.800 abstract notion of going from republic to monarchy without the figure of Augustus.

00:09:06.500 And given the fact that that is going to be the template for all of, you can say, Western

00:09:13.760 Christian monarchy going forth, which then would transition into, say, more neoclassical

00:09:20.000 republican institutions in the 17th and 18th century. That in itself is one of the great

00:09:25.480 moments in history. And really, I would also say, it's impossible to separate the man from

00:09:31.300 the history in many ways that so many people are destined to demonize or underplay the role

00:09:37.520 of individual agency within history. In the case of Augustus, it's incontrovertible. You cannot see

00:09:44.300 the progression of not just Roman history, but European history and world history without the life and

00:09:50.300 career of the man. So that is what I hope to dissect, what exactly that transition means and what

00:09:55.880 Augustus intended by that and what ultimately his legacy was going forward. Yeah, so I'm happy to

00:10:02.480 get more into it.

00:10:03.040 They call his settlement, his form of government, the principate, don't they? So yeah, historians,

00:10:10.640 you know, love to put things in nice, neat boxes. But they do say, you know, that the Augustan era is

00:10:18.140 just a new, an entirely new settlement for the Roman world. And it does seem fair. But yeah, the idea, 0.98

00:10:24.780 often people say he's the first emperor. You know, some say that someone like Caesar might have been

00:10:30.600 the first emperor. Others say, no, it wasn't until Vespasian, when he's truly an emperor, does away with

00:10:36.880 the idea of being a princeps, a first citizen, is a true emperor. And others put it even later. But

00:10:41.920 you know, you know, so anyway, anyway, we could go on and on and on about that transition and what

00:10:47.940 it is. But let's dive into it then. So I suppose if we go through sort of vaguely chronologically and

00:10:53.440 talk about all the repercussions as we go along, I think the first thing to mention about Augustus

00:10:58.220 or any great figure, because you're absolutely right, without him, history would be different.

00:11:03.260 You know, if Alexander dies when he's 21, all of history is different. If Augustus dies when he's 25

00:11:10.700 or something, all of history is different, right? Napoleon dies just before he becomes emperor,

00:11:18.120 all of his subsequent history is different. So it's that sort of important. So when he's young,

00:11:23.340 his sort of formative years, he's one of those people where his own family is, they're not plebeian,

00:11:30.760 but they're certainly not fantastically wealthy and rich. But his great uncle is Julius Caesar,

00:11:39.160 right? So there's someone in your family, not exactly like your father, but someone relatively

00:11:46.840 close to you in your family is unbelievably powerful and important and rich among the first men in the

00:11:55.560 world, in the Roman world. So that would have been his formative years growing up. And we know that

00:12:02.680 Caesar didn't have, well, unless you count Cleopatra's son, Caesar didn't have a clear, clear heir.

00:12:11.000 And so I think maybe it's important to just say a few words or spend a couple of moments thinking about

00:12:17.080 what it must have been like for Octavian as he was then, or Octavius, growing up knowing that your

00:12:26.360 great uncle is this, this figure, this great figure, and he's sort of also in trouble. And there are also

00:12:34.680 civil wars about it going on all at the same time. What's your impression of sort of the world that

00:12:42.200 Augustus grew up in and what effect that must have had on him? But just quickly say, because by the

00:12:48.040 time he is 18, 19, it seems he's absolutely ready to jump onto the stage of history and start being an

00:12:56.680 actor in his own right and playing his hand boldly. To do that when you're 18, 19 years old, what must have

00:13:03.880 his slightly earlier years have been? What must have there been like? Well, he was part of the Octavianus

00:13:14.040 sort of branch of the Julii gens, which was a very sort of insignificant branch of the family, which

00:13:20.360 Julius Caesar, albeit Caesar, was also a branch of the Julii gens. His was far more distinguished than that of

00:13:27.240 the paternal ancestry of Octavianus. And indeed, Octavian itself is really a pejorative.

00:13:33.560 If we're trying to understand the man. So I find it interesting that you look at Augustus and then

00:13:39.640 you look at Octavian, because if you look at that, it doesn't actually really make much sense

00:13:43.800 in terms of this random, you know, boy of an equestrian rank suddenly becoming or being given

00:13:51.000 a title, which is I'll get into what the title means later on when we arrive at it. But I think it's

00:13:56.280 really important to note that he becomes Caesar before he becomes Augustus, when he inherits essentially

00:14:02.680 the title and the legacy when it comes from Julius Caesar. But when Octavius is born in the year 63 AD,

00:14:12.360 the link to Caesar is through, sorry, BC, thank you, is through his mother, Aetia, who is the niece of

00:14:21.720 Caesar. And that is a time where the first informal understanding, the triumvirate has been formed between

00:14:30.360 Caesar, Pompey the Great, and Crassus. A few years later, Caesar will begin his conquest in Gaul.

00:14:37.400 But what does this all mean, like in the grand scheme of Roman history? Because Caesar and Octavian, later

00:14:45.240 Caesar and Augustus, are really coming in at the tail end of a system which is unraveling and falling

00:14:51.720 apart and just evolving into civil wars. I think it's really fair to say that the Roman Empire had

00:14:57.400 been in the state of the almost perpetual crisis since probably the Third Punic Wars and the sack of

00:15:03.400 Carthage around the year 150 BC. Because after then, the senatorial class becomes, you could say, more

00:15:10.760 distant, more corrupt. The Roman legions expand. The Marian reforms essentially lead to these, you

00:15:16.280 know, barracks rulers and coup after coup. I mean, Sulla, Hugh mentioned earlier as having, you know,

00:15:23.400 not much sources that we can ultimately attribute to him, or his reign, or sorry, not reign life. Again,

00:15:31.000 these words actually have major connotations in terms of understanding what does it mean to have a

00:15:35.960 reign, even if you don't really have a monarchical system, which is recognizable at that point. All of

00:15:41.080 these things are sort of interesting to consider. But Sulla is another interesting figure that you can

00:15:46.680 later bring back in terms of what he means to Augustus, because he's a man who is a great warlord.

00:15:52.360 He fights Mithridates, the king of Pontus. He comes back, he launches a series of prescriptions,

00:15:58.600 a terror purge, essentially killing off many of his political enemies. And then he attempts, after having done

00:16:03.640 all that, to correct the flaws in the republican system, after serving as dictator, he then retires.

00:16:10.600 But shortly afterwards, his legacy unravels through, again, another series of conflicts.

00:16:15.640 So during the time you have the birth of Augustus, and the creation of the first triumvirate, and his 0.85

00:16:21.400 rather distant connection, genetic link to Julius Caesar as his great uncle. When you see the creation of the

00:16:29.400 triumvirate, it's basically an admission that the republican institutions mean very little.

00:16:35.320 It doesn't really matter who is Pontifex Maximus, or consul, or all of these other positions,

00:16:41.080 because true power is being wielded by these either incredibly wealthy men, like Crassus, these men with

00:16:48.360 great personal prestige, like Pompey the Great, who having, of course, basically completed the legacy of

00:16:54.920 Sulla, through his consolidation of the East. And then we have an up-and-comer who is distinguished

00:17:01.000 by his lineage, but also by his ambitions, which is Julius Caesar, who begins his career by taking over

00:17:07.800 three important provinces in the north of Italy and southern Gaul, and then uses that essentially as a

00:17:14.200 springboard to, you can almost say, it begins as a series of conflicts used to justify the security

00:17:23.640 of Rome's northern borders. And then it rapidly becomes a personal campaign of conquest, where the

00:17:29.880 legality of such actions is increasingly drawn into question. Not only does he expand the Roman

00:17:35.720 borders to the Rhine, not only does he defeat Vercingetorix by constantly expanding, basically,

00:17:40.920 the remit of who was at war with Rome, who was an enemy. The Caesarean legions, also the first to

00:17:46.840 cross over into Britain, the first to build a bridge to cross over into the Rhine, all of these expeditions.

00:17:53.080 And of course, the more powerful he gets, the more antithetical he seems to the Republican institutions,

00:17:59.160 crossing the Rubicon effectively as a decision to declare war on the Republic, to seize it by force.

00:18:04.440 And from the year 49 BC, up into the year 45 BC, he is really fighting constant wars with

00:18:13.080 a whole series of figures, the most prominent of being Pompey the Great, who he defeats the Battle

00:18:17.720 of Pharsalus. So within this entire scheme, you mentioned the idea of Octavian being the heir

00:18:24.280 of Julius Caesar. And I just want to reference that again, because what does it really mean to be the

00:18:29.240 heir of Julius Caesar? I mean, political heirs didn't really exist in Rome at that time. You had

00:18:36.680 a huge veneration of the family, of lineages, and your lineage and your status in Roman society,

00:18:42.600 whether you were a pleb, whether you were a question, whether you were a patrician, etc.,

00:18:46.440 could allow you to appeal to certain ranks and positions, such as being a member of the Senate.

00:18:52.440 But nevertheless, so much of the Roman political system is built up on personal achievement,

00:18:59.560 imperator, the conquering general, the ability essentially to not just kill the enemies of

00:19:06.360 Rome, but protect the citizens of Rome. So if we're going to talk about Augustus as an heir,

00:19:13.080 essentially, what Augustus effectively receives when Caesar is assassinated in 44 is a name.

00:19:19.640 And a contested legacy in terms of the will, because ultimately the will becomes not so much

00:19:28.440 in terms of like a basis for power in and of itself as a political office, but the will basically

00:19:34.840 allows him to have a foundation from which to start selling off his estates and begin building an army.

00:19:41.240 But what's significant about this is that really Octavianus, up until the age of 1819, really doesn't

00:19:48.040 feature prominently in Roman history at all. The whole notion of him being an heir is really quite

00:19:53.400 surprising. It's something that is effectively sort of presented during the course of when the will is

00:20:01.080 read out during the funeral. And figures like Cicero and even Mark Antony have, you know, struck at this,

00:20:07.640 you know, this, because he's not also the only blood relative of Julius Caesar either. He has other

00:20:13.560 nephews. So the idea that this particular child, effectively, who had only undergone his ceremony of

00:20:21.640 attaining manhood a few years earlier, should suddenly inherit the name is rather remarkable. But so it's,

00:20:28.120 that is in itself remarkable. The fact that he inherited the legacy of Caesar, not the offices of

00:20:32.360 Caesar, not all of the, all the legions of Caesar either. None of the things that would allow him

00:20:39.960 to take over power and begin ruling at the age of 19. But he inherits that legacy and more critically,

00:20:45.800 he decides to assume that legacy. It is a conscious decision that Augustus takes that

00:20:51.800 I am going to take my uncle's name and I am going to become Caesar. It is something no one expected him to

00:20:58.840 do. Basically, everyone thought he was a boy who had this position, again, inherited by accident.

00:21:06.520 He has very little allies. Mark Antony doesn't take him seriously. The former sort of optimatists don't

00:21:12.600 take him seriously, i.e. the elite ranks of the, you know, senatorial class. Cicero doesn't take him

00:21:18.360 seriously. Even his, well, what I found fascinating, actually rereading this subject, is that even his

00:21:24.360 mother, Aetia, encouraged him to not accept the legacy of Caesar, because it would basically place a

00:21:31.800 massive target on him. So that really is the context that Julius Caesar and his legacy essentially

00:21:38.920 could have died when the, quote unquote, liberators assassinated him. And then Cassius and Brutus could

00:21:44.040 have consolidated a new regime. It wouldn't have saved the Republic, almost likely, and, you know, very likely,

00:21:49.720 but we could have seen just a perpetuation of the civil conflict that we saw before the rise of

00:21:54.520 Julius Caesar. Octavius could have decided to back down, or he could have been assassinated very early,

00:21:59.720 and all of history would have looked entirely different. So it's not just the fact that this

00:22:04.120 boy inherited his position, rather he decided to seize the legacy, not simply inherit the legacy.

00:22:11.080 Absolutely, that's a remarkable thing. I mean, really sort of almost unbelievably remarkable.

00:22:16.520 There's lots of times in history when someone very, very young has to step into the breach,

00:22:22.040 and they're completely ineffective, and you can't really blame them, really. I mean, William the

00:22:30.120 Conqueror jumps to mind being extremely young. If you haven't got protectors who are completely on your

00:22:36.040 side, it'd be very, very difficult. But Octavian seems to pick up the mantle completely on his own.

00:22:42.200 So yeah, the idea that he inherits the name, so he becomes sort of

00:22:46.520 Peter Familius, he'd become legally the head of that household. Well, you know, good luck in the

00:22:51.880 world in which he is existing in at that moment. But the thing that I think is even more interesting,

00:23:00.040 or not more interesting, but the thing that's truly, truly remarkable, is that he was able to

00:23:05.880 convert it very quickly. You mentioned that there's a famous line from Cicero saying,

00:23:10.200 this boy is to be sort of placated for a while and then just swept aside. He can't be, you know,

00:23:15.960 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

00:23:22.040 possible. But it was. So again, there's that idea of what forged him. So all his childhood really,

00:23:30.920 I imagine from when his first real memories kick in, when he's first sort of old enough to be aware

00:23:37.400 of what's going on around him, I don't know when that was for you, but you can't be much younger than

00:23:43.720 seven, eight, nine, ten years old, when you're able to really understand what's going on.

00:23:48.120 Already at that point, the Catiline conspiracy is in the past. His great uncle is in Gaul doing that thing. 0.99

00:23:54.920 And then when he's going through his, the age, the years, when he's old enough to sort of truly

00:24:01.240 understand what's going on when you're 14, 15, 16, those are the years when Caesar's fighting Pompey

00:24:08.200 and fighting all over the Roman world for supremacy and then winning and then ruling as a dictator,

00:24:16.040 well, in the end, dictator for life. Those are the years when he's, you know, when he's 15,

00:24:20.760 16, 16, 17, 18, are those years. So he sees how it's done or rather how it's not done.

00:24:29.800 He could, you know, what an education that is. You know, talk about being thrown into, you know,

00:24:36.440 baptism of fire, being thrown in the deep end, immediately being, you know, not involved

00:24:44.200 politically, but being right next to the actor of the age and right next to him. So there's a few

00:24:53.160 things he did when he, I think when he was 16, he went out to Spain and visited Caesar while Caesar

00:25:00.440 was campaigning in Spain. It was very, it was very traditional, wasn't it? When you, when you become a

00:25:06.200 man, you effectively become a camp follower and you're expected essentially to take up military

00:25:12.760 responsibility alongside your relatives. But again, it's quite remarkable, isn't it, to become

00:25:17.160 nothing more than a camp follower to the, to be the driver of a legacy of the magnitude of Caesar

00:25:25.800 within three years. And this is really what's startling. It's interesting that you brought up

00:25:29.240 Cicero because you would have thought based on what you just said, wouldn't you, about his entire

00:25:35.800 sort of formative experience being left in the legacy of Caesar, either in the conquest of Gaul or

00:25:41.800 the period of dictatorship from 44 until, sorry, 49 until 44 BC, that a more primitive and you can say

00:25:50.440 brutish character would have looked at that and said, oh, I just want to be Caesar. I just want to be

00:25:56.360 the dictator. I want to assume power and I want everyone to submit to me. But part of the genius

00:26:02.360 of Augustus is the fact that he, from a very early age, has a clear conception of his role

00:26:08.440 within the grand scale, grand scope of Roman history. You know, it's something that Cicero,

00:26:13.400 of course, is obsessed with in terms of understanding the past, in terms of understanding yourself.

00:26:18.440 Of course, Caesar turned that into his great sort of political rallying cry, to some extent,

00:26:23.560 the importance of lineage. But of course, when it comes to Augustus, one of the first things he does

00:26:28.760 is not simply go out as we imagine and take vengeance against the murders of his adopted

00:26:34.680 father, Julius Caesar. But instead, he occupies this halfway house position where he actually goes after

00:26:41.640 Mark Antony. He becomes the champion of the Roman elite and he panders almost excessively to Cicero.

00:26:49.240 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.

00:30:52.920 Yes.

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 0.98

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

00:35:21.000 premium member at LotusEaters.com.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 06, 2024

PREVIEW： Epochs #179 ｜ Octavian： with Apostolic Majesty

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