Essay #1: Augustus

Caesar Augustus – Devious Politician or Great Leader?

According to not only his own autobiographical work, but also the works of two out of three historians who lived during the two centuries following his reign, Augustus Caesar was a great leader.  He was not the devious, power-hungry politician portrayed in Tacitus’s Annals.  Neither, however, was he the humble, universally-loved-and-lauded dignitary who Suetonius wrote about in Life of Augustus.  Augustus was, instead, an emperor whose modus operandi was somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, in his Life of Augustus, says that the first time Augustus was given the title “father of his country,” he declined it, but they gave it to him again at the theater (Suetonius, Life of Augustus).  Suetonius goes on to account that Valerius Messala, speaking for the whole senate inside the senate house, then gave Augustus the same title.  Augustus’s apparently “exact words,” as written by the same historian nearly 125 years after the emperor’s death, is “. . . what more have I to ask of the immortal gods than that I may retain this same unanimous approval of yours to the very end of my life” (Suetonius, Life of Augustus)?  The close friend of a Roman senator, it is not strange at all that Suetonius should have such glowingly positive things to say about Augustus Caesar.  Not all historians in the two centuries immediately following Augustus’s reign as emperor had such positive—or humble—images of Caesar Augustus, or of his contributions to Rome.

Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus, or Dio Cassius, for example, notes that Caesar Augustus so changed how Rome was governed, and the people and the senate handed over so much power to him, that Rome had become, “strictly speaking, a monarchy” (Dio Cassius, Roman History).  Dio Cassius does not pass judgment on Augustus, however.  He merely notes that Augustus and his successors never actually called themselves “dictators nor kings nor anything of this sort,” (Dio Cassius, Roman History) even though that is what Augustus and the others actually were.  According to Dio Cassius’s work, Augustus was actually a ruler who was to have a ten-year term, but kept being voted back into the leadership of Rome at the end of each term, until he died.  Long before his death, Caesar had the ultimate power of a dictator in Rome; however, since “nothing was actually done that did not please Caesar” (Dio Cassius, Roman History).  Overall, Dio Cassius is more neutral in his analysis of Augustus Caesar’s reign; even though he had all that power, Dio Cassius says, it was the people and the senate who gave it to him and—ultimately—let him keep it until his dying day.  This may be explained by Dio Cassius’s Greek roots; he was a Roman citizen, but wrote in Greek, and there is some controversy over Dio Cassius’s ancestry.

In the Annals, Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus’s commentary is more brutal, showing that Augustus may have been out for the power of dictatorship himself.  Tacitus says that, after Brutus and Cassius were killed in his uncle’s time, “there was no longer any army loyal to the Republic” (Tacitus, Annals), implying that none of the Second Triumvirate (Caesar Augustus, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus) were truly loyal.  Tacitus later goes on to say that, after Caesar basically got tired of being a triumvir, he “[paraded] as a consul . . . [professed] himself satisfied” with the power of the tribunal, and “enticed the soldiers with gifts, the people with grain, and all men with the allurement of peace” (Tacitus, Annals).  Those most likely to oppose Caesar had already been killed in battle by this point, and Tacitus mocks the remaining nobility, who were “raised in wealth and offices,” in accordance with the freedoms they forfeited to Caesar.  Tacitus continually mocks the sheep-like Roman people and senate of Caesar’s time for giving him so much power over them.  Tacitus was possibly of Celtic ancestry, which may explain his negative attitude toward Caesar Augustus and other Romans, as the Celts had been subjugated by Rome.

Although anything written by the person who is the subject of a debate should be taken with a grain of salt, in Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Augustus himself has a “just the facts” type of approach.  While it is true that those facts make him look good in and of themselves, Augustus makes a point of mentioning when and what honors he declined, what honors were given to other people, and what games were hosted both by him and by others in his honor—whether by his request or not.  There is very little, if any, all-out bragging, yet Augustus is not at all apologetic about the power and honors he received.  At the time that Res Gestae Divi Augusti was written, Augustus was “in [his] seventy-sixth year” (Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti), and died within the next year.  Like Dio Cassius, Augustus’s Res Gestae Divi Augusti is rather neutral about the type of leader Augustus was, despite Augustus having written it himself.

Overall, Augustus Caesar was probably a great leader.  Given that the only truly negative point of view is that of an historian descended from a people who had no reason to love Rome, the neutrality of both Dio Cassius and Augustus himself outweigh Tacitus’s opinions.  Because of his apparently close friendship with the senator Pliny, however, it is Suetonius’s account of Caesar that should be considered carefully.  Caesar may have been a great leader after all, but that does not mean that everyone loved him unanimously.

Teacher Comments and Grade: The teacher asked if I had checked to find out of Suetonius was a critic or supporter of Augustus--I hadn't, because I had not read the descriptions of each of the sources involved, just the sources themselves.  There were other comments within the essay, but the final comment the instructor made was, "Darcy--You are on to something here but it needs developing.  The questions I've asked are things you might consider when writing a paper like this."  I got 24/30 or 4/5.