Augustus

Augustus Journal for Latin 2 9/8/2005

What I Learned

I did not know much from this packet, so I learned a lot from it. Augustus was very smart and very able to manipulate people and things to get his way. He does this not only to rise to power, but to choose a successor for himself.

Augustus stayed in power for a long time. He was able to bring peace to the empire which was before always in civil war. He was able to rebuild temples and monuments during his time as emperor.

Before he became emperor, he had to battle the other two members of the triumvirate. He was success was so important to the future of Rome because he really got the trend of having emperors started. This influenced Rome’s future throughout the next thousand years.

I learned about Livia, his wife. He remained married to her throughout most of his life. She was very generous and turned a blind eye to Augustus’s other interests. However, she might have been killing Augustus’s potential successors to have her sons at the throne. Also, this packet reminded me that Augustus started the Praetorian Guard, a personal force to protect him. I was surprised to learn that it had between 3500 and 6000 men! I just believed it was like 60 or so people! This shows how reliant the Romans were on man power. This is very different then today.

Personal Response

This end of this packet further shows how much backstabbing (literally) and fight goes into selecting the emperor. Back then most people died early, or if they were in line for Senator, were killed off by someone else in hopes of themselves becoming emperor (and are then they killed off later).

Also, I was interested in how they chose their successor. They either divorced or married themselves into power. Also, you might be adopted by the emperor to become his successor.

Most of the Roman emperors were former military leaders who were successful in battle. This shows how much Roman culture was wrapped around the military.

Also what interested me was that Augustus had all of these titles. I thought he was suppose to be sneaking by with supreme power, but the Senate calls him Augustus or revered.

I did not get why Augustus was so upset over the loss of three legions. I guess he was trying to scale back and that hurt his plans.

This packet gave me a rare insight into how the Roman system of politics and becoming emperor, and also the start of having an emperor.

Augustus left his mark on the world in a big way.