Augustus

Just as men must give up economic control when their wives share the responsibility for the family's financial well-being, women must give up exclusive parental control when their husbands assume more responsibility for child care.

Everyone wants to lead an extraordinary life.

Practice, the master of all things.

If you want rainbow, you have to deal with the rain.

The greatest impediments to changes in our traditional roles seem to lie not in the visible world of conscious intent, but in the murky realm of the unconscious mind.

What is done well is done quickly enough.

Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit.

Quintilius Varus, Give me back my legions!

Keep our marriage alive, and farewell.

I had a good mind to discontinue permanently the supply of grain to the city, reliance on which had discouraged Italian agriculture, but refrained because some politician would be bound one day to revive the dole as a means of ingratiating himself with the people.

If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance.

If I have played my part well, clap your hands, and dismiss me with applause from the stage.

We write our names in the sand: and then the waves roll in and wash them away.

Did I play my role well? If so, then applause, because the comedy is finished!

After this time I surpassed all others in authority, but I had no more power than the others who were also my colleagues in office.

Behold them, conquerors of the world, the toga-clad race of Romans!

Only that which is well done is quickly done.

Better a cautious commander, and not a rash one.

I came to see a king, not a row of corpses.

To seek to keep the established constitution unchanged argues a good citizen and a good man.

You cheer my heart, who build as if Rome would be eternal.

I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.

If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure.

He [Julius Caesar] learned that Alexander , having completed nearly all his conquests by the time he was thirty-two years old, was at an utter loss to know what he should do during the rest of his life, whereat Augustus expressed his surprise that Alexander did not regard it as a greater task to set in order the empire which he had won than to win it.

Nothing common can seem worthy of you.

Young men, listen to an old man to whom old men listened when he was young.

I'd always thought the world was a wish-granting factory.

Make haste cautiously.

The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself.

May it be my privilege to have the happiness of establishing the commonwealth on a firm and secure basis and thus enjoy the reward which I desire, but only if I may be called the author of the best possible government; and bear with me the hope when I die that the foundations which I have laid for its future government, will stand firm and stable.

At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. For which service the senate, with complimentary resolutions, enrolled me in its order.

By marrying to soon, many individuals sacrifice their chance to struggle through this purgatory of solitude and search toward a greater sense of self-confidence. They glance at the world outside the family and with hardly a second thought grasp anxiously for a partner. In marriage they seek a substitute for the security of the family of origin and an escape from aloneness. What they do not realize is that moving so quickly from one family to another, they make it easy to transfer to the new marriage all their difficult experiences in the family of origin.

I am a man of my word.

Author details

Augustus: Biography and Life Work

Augustus was a notable Consul.

Augustus (born Gaius Octavius ; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian ( Latin : Octavianus ), was the founder of the Roman Empire and the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. The reign of Augustus initiated an imperial cult and an era of imperial peace (the Pax Romana or Pax Augusta ) in which the Roman world was largely free of armed conflict. The principate , a style of government where the emperor showed nominal deference to the Senate , was established during his reign and lasted until the Crisis of the Third Century .

Legacy and Personal Influence

Personally, Augustus was married to Claudia, 42 BC, ; div. 40, BC), Scribonia, (m. 40, BC; div. 38, BC), Livia, (m. 37, BC).

Philosophical Views and Reflections

The Senate also granted Augustus sole imperium within the city of Rome. Traditionally, proconsuls lost their imperium when they crossed the pomerium —the sacred boundary of Rome—and entered the city. In these situations, Augustus held tribunician authority, but the consuls held greater authority. While others would usually obey his wishes owing to his auctoritas , there might be some difficulty. In either 23 or 19 BC, the Senate voted that Augustus's imperium proconsulare maius ('superior proconsular power') should not lapse when he was inside the city walls. The city's armed forces had formerly been under the control of the urban praetors and consuls, but they now came under the sole authority of Augustus.

Augustus is not as widely known as his great-uncle Julius Caesar and is often sidelined as a minor character or brooding villain in theatrical plays, films, TV series, comics, and novels. Goldsworthy attributes this to the fact that Shakespeare never wrote a play centered around him. Shakespeare's 1599 play Julius Caesar features the character of Octavius, while in the 1607 play Antony and Cleopatra he plays a weak, cowardly, and manipulative foe to Antony under the name Caesar. This view is perhaps based on ancient primary sources that reflect the propaganda war waged between Antony and Octavian, manifested in the cold performance of actor Roddy Mc Dowall as Octavian in the 1963 film Cleopatra . Robert Graves's 1934 novel I, Claudius and its subsequent 1976 television series depict the older Augustus in a far more sympathetic light as he is outmaneuvered by his murderous wife Livia, though he plays only a supporting character .

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