Augustus

Augustus ended the Roman republic while claiming to have restored it, and ruled for forty-one years. Born Gaius Octavius in 63 BC into a wealthy equestrian family, he was the grandson of Julius Caesar's sister, and was nineteen and in Illyria when Caesar was murdered and his will made Octavian his adopted son and heir. He went to Rome against advice, claimed the inheritance, raised private troops from Caesar's veterans, and within eighteen months had forced the Senate to make him consul at twenty. He then joined Antony and Lepidus in the Second Triumvirate, whose proscriptions killed some two thousand people including Cicero. He and Antony destroyed the assassins at Philippi in 42 BC, divided the empire, and then fought each other for a decade in propaganda before doing so in fact. Agrippa won Actium in 31 BC, and Antony and Cleopatra killed themselves the following year. He then spent forty years arranging a monarchy that did not look like one. He returned his powers to the Senate in 27 BC and received most of them back with the name Augustus, held the consulship, then the tribunician power and proconsular imperium instead, and called himself princeps, first citizen. The forms of the republic continued and the substance did not. He reorganised the provinces, the taxes, the army and the corn supply, established the praetorian guard, professionalised the legions, and built or rebuilt Rome extensively — he claimed to have found it brick and left it marble. His succession failed repeatedly; every intended heir died. He died in AD 14, leaving Tiberius.

• Lived: 63 BCE – 14 CE
• Nationality: Roman
• Roles: ruler