Augustus Part 3: Birth of a Dynasty

Real Dictators

This episode explores the final ascent of Octavian as he transforms from a political survivor into Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. It det

Key takeaways

• Octavian avoided the title of 'dictator' to prevent the assassination fate of Julius Caesar, opting instead for 'Princeps'.
• The creation of the Praetorian Guard was a strategic move to station military force within Rome under the guise of personal protection.

Main topics

• Consolidation of the Principate
• Augustan propaganda and image management

Notable quotes

I found Rome a city of bricks, and I left it a city of marble.

Conclusion

The episode illustrates how Augustus masterfully balanced ruthlessness

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) It's September the 28th, 1960. We're at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, 18 miles west of London. On the back lots, it's a recreation of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. It's been replicated in the finest detail, exactly how it would have appeared in the first century BC. Sprawling across 20 acres, it's a staggering piece of set design. There's a huge Ptolemaic palace, six life-size sphinxes, buildings rendered in imitation sandstone, obelisks adorned with hieroglyphics. The boulevards are lined with real-life palm trees, albeit flown in from Los Angeles. To be titled simply Cleopatra, the film being made will star Elizabeth Taylor as the Egyptian queen. Rex Harrison and Richard Burton will togher up as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Speaker 5 (1:01) For 20th Century Fox, the giant Hollywood conglomerate behind the Enterprise, no expense has been spared. This is a movie on which it's staking its shirt. Speaker 5 (1:15) Just three days into filming and trouble has already come into paradise. There are arguments over the film's as-yet-unfinished script. Producers squaring up to each other. There are trade union disputes. Moreover, there is the stark reality of the decision to film this movie in the UK. A decision undertaken for tax purposes. A sun-kissed Mediterranean playground, Buckinghamshire is not. Speaker 5 (1:45) Things are about to get worse. Word has just come in from the Dorchester Hotel that Taylor is currently holed up. She's come down with pneumonia. In fact, Taylor's health will deteriorate to such an extent that the pinewood chute will have to be shut down entirely. Speaker 4 (2:07) When the production relocates to Rome, a Speaker 5 (2:10) year and several million dollars later, it's enveloped in a whirl of chaos. There's a new director, a revolving door of producers and screenwriters, a tempestuous affair now being conducted by Burton and the fit-again Taylor. Amid tales of sex, drink, drugs and fisticuffs, and that's just the stars, Cleopatra is spiralling out of control. Speaker 5 (2:38) By the time of its eventual release, Cleopatra will have taken three years to film. At $44 million, nearly $500 million in today's money, this extravagant widescreen epic will go down as the then most expensive movie ever made. In June 1963 in New York, the film will premiere to only so-so reviews. It will virtually bankrupt Fox. Speaker 5 (3:09) Back at Pinewood, meanwhile, British comedy producers will commandeer the abandoned sets to make their own low-budget spoof. In Britain, Carry On Cleo will make back more money and prove more entertaining than the very film it's lampooning. Around the fringes of the Cleopatra saga is sculpted the slight figure of someone called Octavian. As portrayed by actor Roddy McDowall, he is a fey, petulant youth, sickly much of the time. He has the whiff of a bit player, not a warrior hero in the mold of Caesar or Antony. But in art, as in life, you underestimate Octavian at your peril. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is the final part of the Augustus story. And this is Real Dictators. Speaker 5 (4:47) When we left Octavian, events in the real Alexandria had ensured his supremacy over the Roman Republic. In just thirteen years, Octavian has gone from obscurity to political and military dominance. But that is just a means to an end. Octavian's M.O. was always about something else. Revenge. By way of the Second Triumvirate, alongside Antony and Lepidus, he had hunted down the assassins of Julius Caesar, his great-uncle. Abroad, the Liberator armies were wiped out. Back home, a bloody pogrom was instigated against all sympathizers. Later, when Mark Antony went rogue, building his own Eastern Empire with his lover Cleopatra, Octavian pursued him too. After the climactic sea battle at Actium, Octavian harried the couple back to Egypt. There, they had committed suicide. He had also seen to the murder of Caesarian, Cleopatra's teenage son. Aged just 33, Octavian is the man. There is a specter which haunts all Roman rulers. The ghost of Alexander the Great. The king of Macedon, whose conquests were undertaken 300 years before, is the yardstick by which all conquerors must be measured. Already dead by the age Octavian is now, he had marched undefeated from Greece to Egypt to India. Before leaving Alexandria, Octavian visits his crypt. In tribute, he places a crown upon the mummified corpse's head. Professor Joyce Tilsley. Speaker 2 (6:47) It's something that Caesar did as well when he was in Alexandria. He went to see the tomb of Alexander the Great. So I think that Octavian is both emulating Caesar. He's also saying, I'm not related to the Ptolemies because the Ptolemies are no good, but we'll go back to Alexander the Great and he is someone who is worthy of admiration. Speaker 5 (7:05) In handling the corpse, Octavian accidentally knocks off Alexander's nose. Speaker 5 (7:15) On arrival in Rome in August 29 BC, Octavian is granted a ticker tape parade, a triumph. It features an endless line of legionaries, captured slaves, exotic animals, and looted Egyptian booty. It had been meant to feature Cleopatra herself, to be dragged in chains along the Via Sacra before her public execution, a ritual garroting, a wax effigy has to suffice. Speaker 5 (7:49) Octavian is accompanied in his chariot by his nephew Marcellus and his stepson Tiberius. Both are thirteen, for despite his own relative youth, he is already cultivating his favourites, his successors. But he must tread cautiously. Despite his seeming omnipotence, he must still work with the old patrician class. Professor Neville Morley. Speaker 6 (8:17) He's really, really learnt the lesson of Caesar, that whether or not Caesar did want to become king, people thought he did. So the thing that Octavian constantly does is avoid any impression that he wants Speaker 7 (8:34) to be king. Dr. David Gwynne. He is facing the problem that Julius Caesar faced in 45 BC. You are now the sole person controlling a Roman world that particularly hates the idea of one person in control. Julius Caesar had never worked out what exactly you do next. For Octavian, he's never going to forget the Ides of March. He's never going to forget Caesar's murder. That's the consequence if you get this wrong. Speaker 5 (9:04) Not that Octavian is going soft. Speaker 5 (9:08) Now it is the turn of Antony's sympathizers to get a taste of cold steel. It's January the 13th, 27 BC. We're in Rome's Senate, the Grand Marble Chamber. It's unchanged since that day nearly 17 years ago when Caesar was butchered. The benches are carved like a mini amphitheater, orientated towards the huge gold seat, the tantamount throne upon which the old Caesar, and now the new one, holds court. Speaker 5 (9:46) It's cold outside. A winter rain lashes. It's hard to tell whether the shivering of the assembled is due to the weather or nerves. Octavian is back in his purple consular robes. The peaceable politician. But who knows what power he will choose to wield today. Dr. Lauren Ginsberg. Speaker 3 (10:11) The Senate is also trying to figure out how to continue to function like a Republican Senate when you have someone that supersedes you in everything you do. The accounts that we have show a careful dance where the Senate is not sure if they have to clear things with him in advance, how you will make his displeasure known. He was quite happy to come in and use terror, use executions, use suppression of free speech in order to curb things that he did not like. Speaker 5 (10:39) When Octavian rises and makes his statement, there is an audible sigh of relief. What he is undertaking is an act of seeming benevolence. In pursuit of Antony and Cleopatra, the Senate had granted him emergency powers, and now he is formally returning them. All of them. Speaker 3 (11:00) Julius Caesar died in part because he accepted a logically inconsistent title, which was dictator for life. And Octavian learns from this, get the power, leave the title. In his own autobiography, he records frequently that he was offered the office of dictator and he always turned it down. And I think he wants us to think, oh, he's very magnanimous. But in fact, what he did was much more sinister because he was able to get... all of the powers of the dictator, and more to become a true autocrat. Speaker 5 (11:30) As a quid pro quo, the gushing, gullible Senate immediately appoints Octavian and Agrippa, his great general, as consuls, the highest political posts. In the delicate mechanism of the Republic, with its checks and balances, the twin consuls sit for a term of only one year. But this is a mere detail to Octavian. He will see to it that his own tenure is secured for the next ten. The fawning senate has another gift it would like to bestow, and it comes by way of a title, or rather titles. Octavian by rank is to be known henceforth as Princeps, meaning first or foremost. The origin of our word prince. Speaker 5 (12:27) The entire political system, in an extraordinary move, is redesignated accordingly. It will now be called the Principate. If the Republic wasn't dead already, it is now. Speaker 6 (12:44) Romans, who had traditionally been almost obsessive in their opposition to any one man holding too much power, he persuades the Romans that essentially the best way of being governed is for one man to have most of the power. And indeed, what we see through his reign is quite often the people of Rome demanding that he should be given more power. the mass of the Roman population actually welcome authoritarian rule. Speaker 3 (13:17) I think it's important to consider it sort of under the rubric of coerced consent. Romans had been waging civil war for five decades. So if you think five decades of armies coming into Rome, heads on pikes, Romans killing Romans, Rome was exhausted. Rome was terrified. Generations of Romans had been mowed down. I think it's very easy to understand how trading a little bit of freedom for what felt like a lot of safety seemed like a good idea. Speaker 5 (13:47) The flattery continues. Octavian? Or Gaius Julius Caesar, as he has taken to calling himself? How about a fresh start? A makeover? A relaunch? A body within the Senate proposes that Octavian be redubbed Romulus, as in the father of Rome. As in Romulus and Remus, the orphans who, according to legend, had been suckled by a she-wolf. Speaker 6 (14:17) The idea of, let's give you the name Romulus because you are the second founder of Rome. You know, you are as important as the guy who began Rome in the first place. Speaker 5 (14:30) But they settle instead on an honorific, something meaning illustrious or revered. And thus, Octavian becomes the first citizen of Rome, Caesar Augustus. He will record this moment later in the Re's Gestai, his official autobiography. Speaker 7 (14:52) It's possibly the most famous sentence in the Re Gestai. From this point onwards, I excelled everyone in auctoritas. So authority, really it's moral authority. I am not ruling by power, potestas. I am dominating through my moral influence. Speaker 5 (15:10) The name Romulus had been dismissed for its monarchical associations. He was not just founder, but the first king of Rome. The irony is that the family name, Caesar, will now become shorthand for any Roman leader. A king by any other name. High on the sycophancy, Octavian reciprocates with a classic piece of gesture politics. Speaker 5 (15:44) In Rome, during wartime, the gates of the Temple of Janus are left open symbolically. It says something of Rome's turbulence, that they've been rusting on their hinges for 200 years. For Octavian, there must be an end to these forever wars, he says. And so, amid great show, he orders the gates closed. They will remain shut throughout his reign. Speaker 4 (16:18) This September, on the Noiser Podcast Network. On Jane Austen Stories, Dame Julie Andrews continues to bring Austen's beloved classic, Emma, to life. On Short History Of, we're in medieval England for the fascinating story of the Peasants' Revolt. And 25 years on from 9-11, we're on the ground in New York City. On Real Survival Stories, we're on a luscious winery in Northwest America, and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night as the U.S. is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel, A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noisa Plus. Speaker 1 (17:05) I'm Julie Andrews, and it is my great pleasure to return to Jane Austen Stories. This time, I'll be reading another beloved classic, Emma. Join me as we step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. But as new visitors arrive and quiet mysteries unfold, what will our strong-willed heroine learn? both of the secrets of others and of her own heart's