Why augustus caesar was important

By 36 BC the triumvirate became an alliance between two when Lepidus was marginalised. Augustus kept him in comfortable captivity for the rest of his life, a gesture that mixed mercy with cruelty as it prolonged the humiliation of an ambitious man. The estates of the proscribed were insufficient, and so more and more confiscations were arbitrarily imposed on the towns of Italy.

Augustus got most of the blame for the confiscations in an Italy exhausted by civil war and desperate for stability. As relations with Antony broke down, it was better to wage war against a foreign threat, and so Cleopatra, queen of Egypt , was demonised as a sinister eastern temptress who had corrupted a noble Roman, and turned him against his own people.

In 41 BC, Antony had taken the queen as a lover, renewing the affair three years later. Relations between the remaining triumvirs deteriorated until, in 31 BC, the two clashed in battle at Actium in Greece.

Antony was defeated and took his own life the next year. With Antony dead, the year-old Augustus faced no serious rivals and, since he took care to monopolise military force, there was no real danger of new challengers appearing. There was little affection for Augustus, but Romans of all classes were desperate for peace, and hoped simply to be able to live without fear of proscription lists and confiscations.

This security is what he gave them. His control was veiled, expressed in a way that appeared constitutional, even though the veil was thin since no one could take his powers from him or break his hold over the loyalty of the legions.

What mattered was that years and then decades passed, and stability and the rule of law persisted as it had not done in living memory. Peace and the simple virtues of an idealised and now restored past dominate the art and literature of these years. It is also no coincidence that one of the most striking monuments of the Augustan age is the Ara Pacis — the altar of peace shown below.

The peace that Italy enjoyed after generations of civil strife did not mean Rome was no longer at war. For at the same time, Augustus boasted of victory after victory won over foreign rulers and peoples, often adding new territory to the empire. Augustus presented himself as the greatest servant of the state, and defeating external enemies was a glorious means of service.

He also laboured untiringly and publicly to restore good government throughout the empire, spending his days receiving petitions and resolving the problems long neglected by the inertia of the Senate under the Republic.

But his greatest Cleopatra VII ruled ancient Egypt as co-regent first with her father, then with her two younger brothers and finally with her son for almost three decades.

She was part of a dynasty of Macedonian rulers founded by Ptolemy, who served as general under Alexander the Great during By the time the First Punic War broke out, Rome had become the dominant power throughout the Italian Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. Julius Caesar. The Visigoths Sack Rome. The Death of Hannibal. Hannibal the Child Soldier. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher.

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Regardless of which of the many myths one prefers, no one can doubt the impact of ancient Rome on western civilization. A people known for their military, political, and social institutions, the ancient Romans conquered vast amounts of land in Europe and northern Africa, built roads and aqueducts, and spread Latin, their language, far and wide.

Use these classroom resources to teach middle schoolers about the empire of ancient Rome. Julius Caesar was a Roman general and politician who named himself dictator of the Roman Empire, a rule that lasted less than one year before he was famously assassinated by political rivals in 44 B. Rome transitioned from a republic to an empire after power shifted away from a representative democracy to a centralized imperial authority, with the emperor holding the most power.

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