Octavian's Staged Resignation: Imperium, Legates and a Republic Facade

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Octavian was 18 when Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC and left him a name, a will and a crowd of enemies. Lacking the strength to face the assassins alone, he formed a tense alliance with Mark Antony, and together they defeated the conspirators at Philippi in 42 BC and divided the Roman world, Antony taking the wealthy East and Octavian the volatile West. For 13 years the partnership held while Octavian settled veterans on confiscated farms in Italy and Antony aligned himself with Cleopatra. The rivalry ended at Actium in 31 BC, and the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt gave Octavian its grain and treasure.

Remembering why Caesar died, Octavian spent four years demobilizing armies and testing the Senate before formally resigning his extraordinary powers in 27 BC. The Senate begged him to stay, granted him imperium and the names Augustus and princeps, and accepted a split of the provinces: older, peaceful senatorial provinces governed by proconsuls chosen by lot, and frontier imperial provinces, home to most of the legions, run by legates he picked himself. Behind elected magistrates and a working Senate he held a monopoly on armed force. He outlived his favored heirs and had to name his stepson Tiberius, founding the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and centuries later the American founders cited his empire as a warning.

• Octavian funded much of his rise with the wealth of conquered Egypt.
• He avoided a throne and crown, dressed traditionally and walked to the Senate.
• Under his rule imperator shifted from a soldiers' acclamation for a victorious general to the title of the ruler.
• Virgil's Aeneid framed Roman rule as a destiny granted by Jupiter without limit of time or space.
• The system he founded lasted in the West until Romulus Augustus was deposed in 476.