# 1 Rome: republic to empire

Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, was a king in all but name. This may seem unsurprising; after all, one of the things people often associate with Rome is powerful rulers with extravagant tastes, control over a mighty army, and power of life and death over their subjects. But in reality, it was a lot more complicated than this, and the history of Rome’s first emperor illustrates why. Before Augustus came to power, Rome had been a republic (i.e. governed by the people rather than a king) for roughly 500 years, with power carefully balanced in a mixed constitution combining a people’s assembly, a senate and elected magistrates with fixed terms of office. By the mid-first century BCE, however, the system was breaking apart and Rome was plunged into two bitter civil wars between powerful political and military figures, such as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, one after the other. Augustus – at this stage still called Octavian – was the last man standing after the second civil war, and this is how he came to be in control of the Roman state.

Figure 2 The Chiaramonti bust of Julius Caesar, Rome: Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican Museums; Figure 3 Bust of Marcus Antonius, Rome: Vatican Museums, Chiaramonti Museum; Figure 4 Bust of Cleopatra, Berlin: Altes Museum, Antikensammlung.

The civil war period (49–31 BCE) was a highly traumatic experience for the Roman people as a whole and counted a number of its most colourful figures as its victims. From this tender political situation emerged Augustus as the undisputed leader of Rome. In principle, he was just one more power-hungry young Roman aristocrat who got caught up in the storm of power-wrangling at end of Republic: even after emerging victorious over Mark Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BCE at the Battle of Actium (the final battle of the second civil war), it was by no means a given that he would be able to maintain his position of control over the Roman state and avoid the violent fate of his rivals and peers. Augustus managed, first, to stay alive and, more importantly, bridge the bitter gap between political ideals while maintaining absolute control.

Augustus’ ability to maintain power was largely down to his genius for public relations, in which portraiture and imagery played a key role. This allowed him to represent himself in a range of guises to appeal to as many people as possible. Dress can be an important tool for portraying oneself in a particular way, in the Roman period just as it is now, and it is largely through dress that Augustus was able to create his various guises. He was not the first ruler to use dress to project a particular public image, however, nor would he be the last. So, before we look at Augustus, let’s explore this in a more modern setting in the form of the king of Jordan, Abdullah II.

## Study note: a note on dates

You will notice that this course uses the abbreviations ‘BCE’ and ‘CE’ when dating events, texts and objects. These abbreviations stand for ‘Before the Common Era’ and ‘Common Era’. You may be familiar with an alternative method of referring to dates as ‘BC’ (‘before Christ’) and ‘AD’ (Anno Domini, Latin for ‘in the year of our Lord’), and you may find that the authors of other things you read on the topics discussed here use instead BC and AD instead of BCE and CE. Remember that BCE years count backwards – therefore the eighth century BCE is earlier than the seventh century BCE.

OpenLearn - The many guises of the emperor Augustus
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.