Augustus
Augustus (63 BC–AD 14),the first emperor at Rome, who presided over the inception of much of the institutional and ideological framework of the imperial system of the first three centuries ad. The long survival of his system, and its association with a literary milieu that came to be regarded as the golden age of Latin literature, make him a uniquely important figure in Roman history, but no narrative history of his lifetime survives except for the account of Cassius Dio (incomplete 6 BC–AD 14), and the rest of the evidence is very deeply imbued with partisan spirit of various kinds. An estimation of his personal contribution is hard to achieve.
Son of a novus homo or first man of his family to reach the senate (Gaius Octavius, praetor 61, d. 59, from Velitrae in the Alban Hills), the younger Gaius Octavius was typical enough of the milieu of junior senators in the third quarter of the 1st cent.,...
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