Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor (2006) by Anthony Everitt

The trouble with Anthony Everitt is that he makes reading books on ancient history by other qualified, contemporary authors seem so, well, dry and ancient. He possesses a unique ability to put figures like Cicero and Octavian into situations and terms that are remarkably relatable to typical twenty-first century westerners. Long dead aristocrats from a world completely unlike our own miraculously come alive in his biographies. Moreover, his narratives are very well constructed and easy to read, with brisk chapters, some episodic (focusing on a specific campaign, like Egypt) and others thematic (re-constructing a typical day-in-the-life of the elite in Rome), all conveniently broken down further into crisp sub sections. That’s no small feat and well worth the price of admission.

Octavian, the future emperor Augustus, arguably one of the five most important political leaders in western history, had roots and an adolescence that were at once humble and privileged. Born outside of Rome of wealthy but non-noble Latin stock, he displayed intelligence and forbearance from an early age, but was coddled by an overbearing mother, Atia, grand niece of Julius Caesar, and suffered from a weak constitution, completely lacked military experience and was not at all physically courageous. Few great men in world history had less inspiring lineage combined with such limited natural gifts. Not surprisingly, he came to lean heavily on others, particularly childhood friends, such as Maecenas, the eminence grise of his entourage, who provided invaluable counsel in the early years in navigating the turbulent waters of Roman politics, and especially the indispensable Agrippa, that unwaveringly loyal hand, who added to Octavian’s cause a touch of military genius.

The image of Augustus that Everitt paints is, on the whole, rather positive; not a genius in the classical sense, and certainly nobody’s hero, but a genius in his own way and in his own right. Nothing succeeds like success, they say, and on that account Augustus succeeded where other men, no doubt greater than him in many ways (e.g. Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony), tried and failed. He conquered and remade Roman politics on his own terms. Everitt writes that the future emperor Augustus could be humane and generous, noble even, on several occasions intervening to save the lives of helpless slaves and others usually beneath notice in ancient societies. However, he also did not hesitate to liquidate rivals, in some cases wholesale, such as the Proscription of the second Triumvirate in 43 BC; he conquered more territory and peoples in the name of Rome than any leader before or after him; and he treated his closest family as ebony pawns in his winner-take-all game of dynastic succession. “But for all his flaws,” Everitt concludes, “the balance sheet ends in credit…he reigned the longest [of all Rome’s emperors]; and his work lasted with modifications, for many generations.”

Everitt highlights two aspects that essentially define the Emperor. First, the endgame, a magnificent empire whose power was concentrated in a dynastic pseudo-monarch, was no accident. “His career since his acceptance of his legacy from Julius Caesar [in 44 BC] makes complete sense only if it is understood as a careful and undeviating pursuit of absolute power.” Second, he pursued that objective thoughtfully and with circumspection. “He made haste slowly, seeking permanent solutions rather than easy answers.” He trumpeted the values of old Rome — “tradition, sobriety, duty, womanly modesty, marriage” — while carefully constructed an autocratic system anathema to that tradition, the whole while completely cognizant of the immoral charade, if Everitt is to be believed.

In the end, Everitt seems to argue, the most important aspect of Augustus’ reign was its record-setting longevity. From his victory of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BC to his death in 14 AD, he ruled virtually unopposed for 44 years. By the time of his death, very few living Romans had any personal experience with the old Republic. All they knew was the empire of Augustus or perhaps, among the “senior citizens” of the ancient world (those in their forties and fifties), a recollection of the dark days of the civil wars of the Caesarians against Mark Antony or Sextus Pompeius or Brutus or Cato or Pompey. It is helpful to put the timeline into contemporary terms. If Augustus’ death in 14 AD were equated with the year I wrote this review (2011) the last embers of resistance to his rule were stamped out at Actium (31 BC) in 1965 (the year the US doubled down in Vietnam), Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March (44 BC) would have occurred in 1952 (the year the Korean War ended and Eisenhower was elected President), and Pompey defeated at Pharsulus (48 BC) in 1948 (the year of the Berlin Airlift). The relative “good old days” of the Republic (the 60s BC) would have been known really only to those who had lived through the Great Depression in the 1930s. By the time of his passing, one might surmise that only a handful of old men and women (literally just dozens) could have spoken about the Republic on personal terms, and this in an age without photos, audio and other means that make the past more palpable and real.

In closing, I loved this book just as much as I loved his earlier (and more widely celebrated) biography of Cicero. The first thing I did was go to Amazon and order the final installment in his triptych on great Romans: Hadrian and the Age of Rome. Even if you’re the type of person who prefers to get your ancient history served up in juicy mini-series style, such as HBO’s recent “Rome,” do yourself a favor and read “Augustus” to give you a more stable foundation in the historical reality of the times while pursuing those admittedly satisfying theatrical sideshows.