Julius Caesar’s assassination on the ides of March, 44 bc left Rome without a clear and decisive leader. Having just endured a brutal civil war that ended with Caesar’s ascension to dictator, the empire seemed headed for yet another period of internal turmoil. Caesar’s right-hand man and loyal lieutenant Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), 39, quickly moved to take over Caesar’s mantle, and with it the leadership of many of the dead emperor’s military legions. As the individual chiefly responsible for hunting down and punishing those involved in Caesar’s murder, Antony proved himself relentless in the pursuit. Besides bringing justice to Caesar’s killers, it was a convenient way of removing possible rivals for power.
One rival, however, was beyond the immediate reach of Antony’s vengeance. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian), the adopted 18-year-old son of the late emperor, was named in Caesar’s will as his legal heir. Widely considered weak, timid, vacillating, and inexperienced, Octavian was actually a cunning and shrewd judge of character. He was determined to inherit his father’s position and all the power associated with it. Notified of Caesar’s death while in the Roman city of Brundisium, Octavian moved immediately to identify himself with his father’s image and thus lend any subsequent actions at least a veneer of legitimacy. He took the name “Caesar” as his own, a practice by which all subsequent emperors were also to be known. The very name had a tremendous emotional pull and meaning for the masses, and the boy underwent his first major transformation—from unknown teenager to newly crowned Caesar. Many of the troops present at Brundisium joined his cause, and as he embarked for Rome to claim the throne, his retinue began to grow in size, swelled by many veterans of Caesar’s campaigns who had resettled in the Italian colonies. By mid-April, less than a month after Caesar’s assassination, Octavian was nearing the outskirts of Rome.
