[sheepishly] Me too [/sheepishly]
I’ve always wondered how historically accurate they are. Pretty close to accepted history, I’ve been led to understand. But, then, I’ve never discussed it with anyone who really knows these things…
[paging Tamerlane]
The Senate appointed Dictators, and the office had already been corrupted by the actions of Sulla, in 82-79 BC, who didn’t hand the office over when convention said he should have, and, had he not resigned, could have lasted for life (he only lived for a year in retirement as it was).
Also, we should remember that “Emperor” at first didn’t have the connotation that it has today. It really meant something more like “Field Marshall”…the top military leader of Rome. It was just another of the titles that Augustus had the Senate give him.
While we’re on the subject, is there any historical evidence that Livia (Augustus’s wife) poisoned dozens of people, including Augustus himself, as depicted in Grave’s novel I, Claudius? Any circumstantial evidence?
Sure, lots of people dropped dead under suspicious circumstances. But don’t people–especially given the level of medical knowledge during roman times–just drop dead on their own?
Actually, as mentioned above, Augustus did not “have the senate” give him the title “Imperator”. They bestowed it upon him, but he didn’t use it.
Another Colleen McCullough fan here. And Robert Graves. Plus I concentrated on Roman history when I got my BA.
“Emperor” is not a term that any Roman of Caesar’s time would have understood. It derives from the word imperator, which simply means “conqueror” or “victorious one”. During the days of the Republic, it was customary for Roman troops to hail their commander as imperator on the battlefield after a great victory. So there are many before Augustus who could have rightfully called themselves imperator without any connotations of supreme civil power.
It was standard practice in late Republic Rome to get rid of one’s enemies by charging them with corruption as they returned from governing a province. A successful prosecution meant that their property would be seized, that they would lose their citizenship, and that they would be banished. The most effective way around this tactic was to have oneself elected consul, which would effectively render the returning governor immune from prosecution. In order to be elected, though, the candidate had to present himself in the Forum as a consular candidate, and the very act of entering Rome proper made the returning governor vulnerable to immediate legal action. The way around this was to apply for candidateship in absentia, which Caesar had done successfully many times. As his governance of Gaul came to a close, however, Caesar’s enemies in the Senate blocked his petition for in absentia candidacy. Plus, they had fixed the courts to ensure a swift and sure guilty verdict. Faced with certain conviction and exile, Caesar took his troops and marched on Rome. Most of the Senate fled. When Caesar arrived in Rome, he convened the remaining senators (all loyal to him) and had himself appointed dictator. Then he chased his enemies around the Mediterranean for a few years and defeated all armed resistance. He was still holding the dictatorship (the tenureship of which had been repeatedly renewed by the puppet Senate) when he was assassinated in 44 BC.
After Caesar’s death, his supporters conducted a successful war against the conspirators. Then the leaders of the Caesarian faction, Marcus Antonius and Octavian, turned on one another and plunged the nation into yet another civil war. When the dust cleared, Octavian was the “last man standing”. Octavian was wise enough to realize that the Republican form of government was dead, that the largely unwritten Roman constitution was designed to rule a small city state, and not a far-flung empire. So maintaining an air of legitimacy and traditionalism carefully designed to fool the public and disguise the true extent of his power, Octavian reinvented the Roman state and reigned for some fifty years. He took the name Augustus, and his official title was princeps, which simply meant the leader of the Senate. Upon his death, Rome as a whole had come to accept autocracy, and though some senators demanded the return of the Republican system, Tiberius assumed the powers of the principate with little real opposition. From time to time over the next few centuries the ghost of Republicanism raised its head, but it was never more than a pipe dream.
To summarize the summary, the Roman Republic had teetered on the brink of collapse for some eighty years before the death of Caesar. But the rise of Augustus and return of stability is what truly marks the division between the Republican and Imperial eras. As to when the word “emperor” came into common use, I’m not certain.
I’m often amazed by the knowledge gathered in this site’s poster’s brains. Not only there’s someone knowing the name of the “corona” worn by Caesar, but there’s someone else knowing how he got it. Not sure why this particular info made me post this comment, since there are many other instances when I’m similarily impressed, but for some reason, this one amazed me. Perhaps just my mood.
End of hijack.
Ah ha!
Don’t forget that at one time in his career Caesar was also known as “Queen of Bithynia.” But I don’t think he used that one on his resume…
(For more about Caesar as “Queen” and innumerable other Roman scandals, Suetonius is a must read.)
Good answers to the OP, by the way!
As is Plutarch’s “The Fall of the Roman Republic” - not quite as juicy and tabloid as Suetonius, but proabably a little heavier on the facts.
It is important to remember that a great deal of what we know about Republican and early imperial Rome comes entirely from the surviving works of writers who came decades or even centuries after the events they chronicled. Furthermore, the motivations of these writers rarely had anything to do with what we would consider serious scholarly research.
Suetonius, for example, adored gossip and juicy tidbits. Living and writing during the age of the “Good” Emperors, he was allowed more literary license than one might normally expect, but, at the same time, had access to imperial archival materials. So while the more outrageous stories should be taken with a heavy dose of salt, Suetonius was evidently in a good position to get his basic facts correct.
Plutarch’s approach to history was not much concerned with the facts either. He was interested primarily in character. His biographies are as much philosophical inquiries into the nature of virtue as histories. Good reading, though.
Tacitus, on the other hand, was the Kitty Kelly of his day. He was from a senatorial family that had never gotten over the fact that they had no power under the imperial system. So his histories drip with poison. Probably alone among historians contemporary to the age, he paints a negative picture of Augustus, and his opinions of the Julio-Claudian dynasty only go downhill from there.
So as far as individual scandals, such as the possibility of Livia’s poisoning of Augustus, there is really little evidence other than what these men have to say. Since the Romans, with very few exceptions, cremated their dead, there’s no hope of finding Augustus’ remains to conduct forensic tests. Robert Graves did carry out an investigation of Claudius’ death based on the literary evidence, and concluded (somewhat tortuously) that Seneca was in on the plot.
Colleen McCullough is an interesting case. The research she had conducted in the writing of her Masters of Rome series has been tremendous. For the most part, her novels take the known historical record and simply fill in the gaps. Since these are novels and not scholarly volumes, McCullough is under no obligation to stick to the facts, and yet this is precisely what she does. Naturally a lot of the details she fills in cannot be proven as accurate, but nor can they be disproved. Even in cases where she diverts from the historical record, her reasons for doing so are based on solid reasoning and are defended in the reader’s notes that conclude each volume. In making these novels so historically accurate, McCullough has taken a bold step, because her weighty prose is a casual reader’s nightmare. But for those readers with long attention spans who don’t mind taking notes as they read, Masters of Rome is a veritable smorgasbord.
I like her books. The only problem I have with them is that she’s the Populares’ bitch, so to speak. 
Her portrayals of Marius and especially Caesar are so flattering that you wonder just how anybody could oppose them, and while she does portray Sulla as some sort of tragic antihero, her general portrayal of the Optimates and the boni is almost entirely negative. Of course, she’s writing novels, so she doesn’t have any obligation to be objective. But the actual people were somewhat more morally nuanced than she portrays them, and her books might have been stronger if she had portrayed that.
Ceaser was “reputed to be every man’s woman … and every woman’s man”.
He must have had a tiring love life! 
Captain Amazing does have a good point. Since Caesar is McCullough’s hero, she does portray the populares in a far more sympathetic light than she does their rivals. I don’t feel that she utterly vilifies the optimates, though. She shows them as basically good people but misguided by their blind adherence to custom and aristocratic privilege. There’s no doubt, though, who she intends the readers to cheer for, which is why Marius’ decent into madness is such a downer. I do agree that Caesar is too perfect.
Some of McCullough’s conclusions leave me somewhat puzzled. She portrays Caesar as exclusively heterosexual, though there are many ancient sources that say otherwise. She also makes the assertion that at the time of Spartacus’ revolt, gladiatorial combat was never to the death. I’d like to know what her justifications are for these diversions from the accepted historical opinion.
I also don’t like the way that her characters spring from with womb with their adult personas already developed.
But, heck, nobody’s perfect.
It would be odd indeed if gladatorial combat wasn’t to the death in early times, as I believe it developed out of human sacrificial rituals at funerals for important people.
Just to add to ** Kizarvexius’** excellent summary, the technical way that Octavian gathered all the power to himself was to be appointed to as many of the offices of the key Republic as possible - that way he had the formal legal authority and the trappings of the Republic, but in fact he was an autocrat. Octavian was one of the classic bad examples that contributed to Montesquieu’s doctrine of the need for the separation of powers.
Northern Piper is right on the money. Augustus had himself elected or appointed to one magistracy after another, except that at the end of the year he retained the powers of each office rather than handing them over to his successors.