Augustus Becomes Rome’s First Emperor

Gaius Octavius was the great-nephew of Julius Caesar and took Caesar’s name under his will (Suetonius, Augustus 7.2). After Caesar’s murder he raised an army at the age of nineteen, became one of three men appointed to reorder the state, and defeated Caesar’s assassins (Augustus, Res Gestae 1–2). In 31 BC Octavian, as he is called for these years, defeated his last rival, Mark Antony, in the sea battle off Actium. He then took Alexandria, where Antony had fled, and added Egypt to Rome’s empire (Augustus, Res Gestae 25, 27) (Suetonius, Augustus 17).

What he did with that power he describes himself, in the record of his deeds that was inscribed after his death. “In my sixth and seventh consulships, when I had extinguished the flames of civil war, after receiving by universal consent the absolute control of affairs,” he writes, “I transferred the republic from my own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people.” In return the senate gave him the name Augustus. From then on, he says, he excelled all others in rank, but had no more power than his colleagues in each office (Augustus, Res Gestae 34).

Cassius Dio, a senator writing more than two centuries later, tells the same events less kindly. Octavian came into the senate in Rome and read a speech laying down his powers. The senators, some sincerely and some from fear, begged him to keep them (Cassius Dio, Roman History 53.2.7–53.11). He then accepted for ten years the provinces that needed armies, and left the peaceful ones to the senate, so that he alone commanded soldiers (Cassius Dio, Roman History 53.12–13). Dio says that he would have liked the name Romulus but saw that it suggested kingship, and took “Augustus”, a word used of sacred things (Cassius Dio, Roman History 53.16). Suetonius names the senator who proposed it, Munatius Plancus (Suetonius, Augustus 7.2). Dio’s verdict is that the power of people and senate now passed wholly to one man and that Rome, whatever it was called, was from this time a monarchy (Cassius Dio, Roman History 53.17).

Augustus ruled until his death in AD 14 (Suetonius, Augustus 100.1). He records that the gates of Janus, shut only in time of peace, were closed three times while he was leading citizen (Augustus, Res Gestae 13). Herod of Judea kept his throne under him; Tacitus says that Augustus, after his victory, increased Herod’s power (Tacitus, Histories 5.9).

This is the government under which the New Testament opens. Luke dates the birth of Jesus by a decree of “Caesar Augustus” that all the world should be enrolled (Luke 2:1), and the ministry of John the Baptist by the fifteenth year of his successor Tiberius (Luke 3:1). Jesus is asked whether it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar (Mark 12:14–17), and at his trial the chief priests tell Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar!” (John 19:15).