the immediate aftermath of the assassination, even Caesar’s close friend, Mark Antony, was apparently unsure which way the wind was blowing. Plutarch, in his Life of Antony, says that Antony even gave the conspirators his son as a hostage, and entertained a leading conspirator, Cassius, to dinner while Lepidus, Caesar’s master of the horse (lieutenant to Caesar as dictator), did the same for Brutus. (Plutarch, Antony, 13.) As consul, Antony convened the Senate, spoke in favour of an amnesty and of allotting provincial commands to both Brutus and Cassius and proposed a law abolishing the position of dictator forever. The Senate ratified these proposals, while voting to honour Caesar by giving him the posthumous title divus (the divine Julius), making him a minor deity, and confirming all Caesar’s reforms (Plutarch, Caesar, 67.7; Antony, 14.)
Armed with his new command, Brutus issued coins with the motto LEIBERTAS, the old-fashioned spelling of libertas (liberty), and others with the legend EID MAR, an abbreviation for (the again intentionally archaic spelling of) Idibus Martiis meaning “on the Ides of March”, together with a pileus (cap of liberty given to newly enfranchised slaves) and two daggers, celebrating Caesar’s assassination. On the obverse was a portrait of Brutus described as imp(erator), general. Mary Beard opines, “The portrayal of a living person on a Roman coin was taken as a sign of autocratic power.” (Beard, p. 295.) Brutus certainly did not have “autocratic power,” but was that what he was aiming at? Almost certainly not. The portrait of a living person on a coin was decidedly rare, but the name Brutus was closely identified in the Roman psyche with a fervent anti-monarchical tradition. Marcus Brutus himself claimed descent from the founder of the republic, Lucius Junius Brutus, who, according to persistent tradition, had been instrumental in ending the monarchy in 509 BCE, some 450 years earlier and whose portrait had appeared on coins minted by Marcus Brutus as moneyer at some time between 59 and 54 BCE. With the legends EID MAR, the date of Caesar’s assassination, and LEIBERTAS, the watchword of the oligarchic republic, the message conveyed by Brutus’s coins was not that he was aiming at autocratic power, but that he had emulated his iconic ancestor by liberating Rome from a tyrant who had enslaved it.
The populace, however, were incensed at the murder of their idol as the assassins soon learned when an unruly crowd descended on their houses intent on burning them down. As part of his lifelong devotion to the popular cause, in his will, Caesar bequeathed to the Roman people his gardens near the Tiber, and left every Roman man 300 sesterces.
Caesar’s Heir
Probably the most significant provision of Caesar’s will was his adoption of his nineteen-year-old great-nephew, Gaius Octavius who also inherited three quarters of his substantial estate. But before he could take power, he had to emerge victorious from a two-stage civil war, first against the conspirators and then against his erstwhile fellow triumvir Mark Antony.
Emerging victorious in 31 BCE from the Battle of Actium against Antony, the young Caesar established a new form of government, which, with modifications, was to last for three centuries, with repercussions down to the present day. But what sort of government was this to be? There is a great deal of confusion among modern writers about the nature and even the name of this new form of government. In common parlance, Augustus is generally referred to as the first Roman “emperor,” and the system of government instituted by him as the “Roman Empire”. But this is neither clear nor accurate. See the discussion below.
Avoiding Julius Caesar’s Mistake
As an astute politician, Augustus took care not to make the same mistake that had cost Julius Caesar his life. Julius Caesar had ruled Rome as “dictator” for four years when he was appointed dictator perpetuo or dictator in perpetuum (literally, “dictator in perpetuity”, commonly translated as “dictator for life” but more accurately dictator for an indefinite period). Acceptance of this title signaled the end of the Roman Republic, which had lasted for 450 years under an elite to whom one-man rule was carefully eschewed except for brief emergencies. Julius Caesar’s position as dictator perpetuo posed a threat to this dominant minority, a number of whom, therefore, conspired to assassinate him on that fateful Ides of March, 44 BCE.
After his victory over Antony at Actium in 31 BCE, Augustus faced a serious dilemma. He was now master of the Roman world, but on what footing should his rule be placed? The title rex (king), which even Julius Caesar had refused, was anathema to the Republican aristocracy. But the title “dictator” was clearly also now off limits. The common people, who adulated Julius Caesar, had no objection to one-man rule, as was made clear in their outpouring of grief on Caesar’s assassination. Indeed, they wanted a strong leader to champion their cause. So the young Caesar’s game plan was to retain the support of the masses without offending the aristocracy, a daunting balancing act.
The Transmogrification of an Equestrian
The historic figure who is usually referred to as “Augustus” was born in 63 BCE into an equestrian family (i.e. the second rank, below that of senator). with the undistinguished name Gaius Octavius. In 44 BCE, on adoption in his great-uncle Julius Caesar’s will, he immediately took his adoptive father’s name: Gaius Julius Caesar. It was usual for an adoptive son to tack his own original nomen (name), in this case “Octavius,” on to his new name as an additional cognomen (surname), often in adjectival form, so: “Octavianus.” That is why he is generally referred to by modern historians during this period of his life as “Octavian”, but he is not known ever to have used the name “Octavianus” himself. To his contemporaries, he was known simply as “Caesar,” and this was his greatest asset with the masses as it enabled him to capitalize on his adoptive father’s popularity. Moreover, besides having been a charismatic champion of the people, Julius Caesar was now a divinity, having been deified shortly after his death. So, in 42 BCE, the next step in Augustus’s transmogrification was to add Divi Filius (son of a god or son of the divine (Julius)) to his name, which now became: Gaius Julius Caesar Divi Filius. In 38 BCE, in a masterstroke, both his forename “Gaius” and his clan name (nomen gentilicium ) “Julius” were ditched and replaced by Imperator (commander), the victory title by which a successful general was hailed by his troops on the field of battle. This gave him a new identity: Imperator Caesar Divi Filius. But the culmination of his reinvention of himself came in 27 BCE when he was accorded by the Senate the title Augustus (the Sublime or the Revered), a sobriquet associated with Romulus, Rome’s mythical founder. He then emerged in his full glory as Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus.
Taking each component of this nomenclature separately:
Imperator: As Augustus tells us in his masterly autobiography, which came to be known as the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, he was hailed as imperator twenty-one times (RG §4). This was the traditional way in which a successful general was honoured by his troops on the field of battle. But, in a master stroke, he now adopted it as a forename. This designation, which came later to be used to mean emperor (and has given us the English word “emperor”), is the reason that the whole regime instituted by Augustus came to be known in English (and similarly in the Romance languages) as the Roman Empire. Because Roman emperors had never had the title of king, when Napoleon Bonaparte assumed monarchical powers he chose to call himself not king but emperor, which did not offend against his republican sensibilities as heir to the French Revolution.
Caesar: This is the only part of Augustus’s final designation that was an actual name: Julius Caesar’s cognomen. But it also became a title, later accorded to the emperor-designate and later still to a “junior” emperor, with the title Augustus reserved for “senior” emperors. It is the origin of the Russian imperial title Tsar or Czar and German Kaiser, and hence Kaiserzeit for the whole period ushered in by Augustus’s accession to power.
Divi Filius: Being the son of a god was no mean feat, but Julius Caesar was reputedly already of divine stock before his deification as a descendant of the goddess Venus Genetrix, whose image accordingly appears on coins issued by