Dimensions
162 x 240 x 49mm
The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC left the Roman state in danger of total collapse; the ruling class in society was breaking up entirely and threatened to carry everything down into the abyss with it. The systems that had governed Rome for 500 years were crumbling, and there was no ready substitute to hand. Amidst the chaos that followed, it was discovered that Caesar had named his great-nephew, Gaius Octavius, as his sole heir.
Augustus came to Rome at the age of eighteen, with nothing to support him but a certain amount of past encouragement from the murdered dictator and the clause in Caesar's will naming him as his son and heir. Regarded by many as a provincial upstart, he had no supporters outside the dictator's hangers-on, and had to stake his claim in the midst of a large pack of members of the old nobility, Caesarian generals and greedy soldiers, none of them well disposed towards him. However, he embarked on his game of political expediency and played for the highest of stakes. Few thought he had a chance.
In this magisterial biography, Jochen Bleicken shows how Augustus transformed the fraying and unruly Republic into the greatest empire the world had ever seen. His consolidation and expansion of Roman power 2,000 years ago laid the foundations for much of Western history. Bleicken examines Augustus' lonely struggle - in a society that was consuming itself with hatred, envy and ambition, and in which every man struck out ruthlessly around him - and draws a compelling and vivid portrait of a ruler with a deep understanding of human nature, and the calculating acumen to know how best to manipulate it.
