The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus
Octavian formally returns the state to the Senate and People and receives in exchange an extraordinary provincial command and the name Augustus. The Republic is declared restored; in practice a monarchy is founded. The settlement is deliberately ambiguous, and reconstructing exactly what powers were conferred in 27 versus 23 BCE remains a scholarly argument.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Augustus (Gaius Octavius / Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus) · person · Rome and the provinces · not located
- Roman Law · institution · Mediterranean-wide · not located
- The Roman Legion · military_formation · Frontier provinces, principally Rhine, Danube, Britain, Syria, North Africa · not located
- Rome · city · Italy
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
Res Gestae Divi Augusti (Monumentum Ancyranum)
Augustus's own account of his achievements, in Latin and Greek, listing offices, benefactions, conquests and the claim that he 'transferred the state to the free disposal of the Senate and People'. It is the founding document of the Principate's self-presentation and simultaneously a piece of political advocacy, not a neutral record.
Cambridge University Press (critical edition, A. E. Cooley, 2009); inscription at Ankara, Turkey · composed by 14 CE; inscribed copies 1st c. CE · Partly verified
Res Gestae Divi Augusti, principal copy on the Temple of Rome and Augustus, Ankara; critical edition A. E. Cooley, 'Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary', Cambridge, 2009
Roman Imperial Coinage, Volume I: from 31 BC to AD 69
Augustan coinage circulated imperial titulature, portraiture and slogans (CIVIBVS SERVATEIS, SIGNIS RECEPTIS, AEGYPTO CAPTA) to a largely non-reading population across three continents. Coinage is the empire's highest-volume communication medium and one of its few genuinely empire-wide standardisations.
Spink & Son / British Museum (RIC series) · revised edition 1984 (C. H. V. Sutherland) · Partly verified
RIC I (2nd edn), Augustus; type catalogue searchable via the Online Coins of the Roman Empire project at http://numismatics.org/ocre/
Recorded on Augustus (Gaius Octavius / Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus)
- Traditional foundation of the Roman Republic
- Construction of the Via Appia begins
- The Punic Wars
- The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus
- Battle of Actium
- Assassination of Julius Caesar
- Caesar crosses the Rubicon
- Inauguration of the Flavian Amphitheatre
- The empire reaches its greatest territorial extent
- Construction of Hadrian's Wall begins
- The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana)
- Dedication of Constantinople
- Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I
- Alaric's Goths sack Rome
- Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
- Ottoman capture of Constantinople
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Ottoman capture of Constantinople · 1453-05-29
- Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire · 0476-09-04
- Alaric's Goths sack Rome · 0410-08-24
- Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I · 0395
- Dedication of Constantinople · 0330-05-11
- The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana) · 0212
- Construction of Hadrian's Wall begins · 0122
- The empire reaches its greatest territorial extent · 0117