Octavian Marches on Rome and Demands the Consulship at 19
When Julius Caesar was assassinated in March 44 BCE, his great-nephew and adopted heir Gaius Octavius was eighteen, studying in Apollonia in Epirus. He returned to Italy, accepted the adoption and the name Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, and began the most patient and lethal political career in Roman history. Cicero calculated that he could use Octavian as a weapon against Antony and then discard him — famously writing that the boy should be 'praised, honoured, and disposed of.' The phrase would prove the most catastrophic miscalculation in Roman political history. After the Battles of Mutina in April 43, both consuls were killed fighting Antony. The Senate began treating Octavian as an inconvenience. Octavian sent an embassy to Rome demanding the vacant consulship. The Senate refused: he was nineteen, twenty-three years below the legal minimum age. Octavian marched. He led eight legions down the Via Flaminia toward Rome. The Senate had no military force capable of resistance. It capitulated. On August 19, 43 BCE — exactly a month before his twentieth birthday — Octavian was elected consul. Within weeks he, Antony, and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate. The proscriptions that followed, in which Cicero was killed, completed the destruction of the Republican political class. Twenty years later he would be Augustus.
- Year: 43 BCE
- Category: Political
