Augustus and the Salvation of Rome

First Things, November 7, 2023

With the victory of Octavian Caesar, the heir of Julius Caesar, over Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium in 31 B.C., the greatest of Rome’s civil wars came to an end. Indeed, the whole era of civil war, which had torn apart late republican Rome for over half a century, was now over. After decades of reckless violence, political instability, economic misery, betrayals, cruelty, and staggering levels of corruption, what happened next in Roman history comes to the historian as almost a complete surprise. Rome was hated from Spain to Syria, the fragility of Roman power was obvious, and astrologers had long been predicting the empire’s imminent collapse. The wonder is that, instead of collapsing, the Roman empire entered what historians, ever since antiquity, have celebrated as its Golden Age. The story gives us hope in our own day: Times of political collapse will pass, and can also bring forth unexpected greatness…

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