The first subject of our enquiry must be Caesar Augustus himself. He is often described as the first Roman emperor, but that is a wholly misleading description. What causes the misunderstanding is the simple-minded idea that the Roman republic came to a sudden end in the civil wars of the forties BC, and that what followed was the imperial monarchy. That was not what happened.
To understand Augustus, we need to understand the late republic. Τo understand the late republic, we need to take seriously what the ancient sources say about it. Those sources are uniquely authoritative and well informed, consisting as they do of the writings of contemporary participants whose understanding of the political culture of their time is, I think, beyond challenge. So the argument in this chapter will depend entirely on primary evidence, presenting a picture of Augustus’ life and times through the words of contemporaries—including, of course, Augustus himself.
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