The collapse of the Roman republic, and the establishment amid its rubble of the rule of the Caesars, constitutes the primal political narrative of the West. In 49 BC, a system of government founded on the conviction that the only conceivable alternative to liberty was death spectacularly imploded. The claim of Julius Caesar, the greatest general of his day, to a primacy over his fellow citizens resulted first in civil war, and then – after he had crushed his domestic foes as he had previously crushed the various tribes of Gaul – in his assassination. Two more murderous bouts of civil war followed. Assorted warlords struggled for supremacy.
By 31 BC, only one was left standing: Caesar’s great-nephew and adoptive son, Octavian. Four years later, by the unanimous vote of the Senate, he was granted a new name, one which served to distinguish him both from his past as a youthful terrorist, and as someone halfway to becoming a god: “Augustus is what our fathers call anything holy.” For more than four decades, he ruled supreme over the Roman world. It was an age of peace and plenitude. By AD 14, when Augustus finally died, few could remember the days of the free republic. The model of autocracy that he had constructed with such subtlety, patience and care had come to be taken for granted by almost everyone.
Read Full Article »
