Slaves, damnati and freedmen in ancient Rome > Likes and Comments
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The parallels between the societal unrest that led to the end of the Roman Republic and the installation of Octavian as the first Roman Emperor makes for fascinating reading but also increasingly disturbing reading as it is becoming ever easier to discover parallels with the progress of the 2024 Presidential Race in the Disunited States of America. And I fear that Octavian was actually quite a decent emperor and the crowning of Emperor Donald Caesar Trump will short-circuit the History Repetition Circuit many decades to the era of Caligula etc.
Octavian was an effective but ruthless emperor. His record in the civil wars after GJ Caesar's death was bloody. However, he ruled carefully and wisely in the snakepit of Rome. His great advantages included his fixer Agrippa, his administrator Maecenas and his wife and counsellor, Livia Drusilla. The four of them together were unbeatable.
Without such a team, it would have been very difficult for Augustus to have lasted so long. A lesson for us all.
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Philip
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Jul 17, 2024 04:52AM
The parallels between the societal unrest that led to the end of the Roman Republic and the installation of Octavian as the first Roman Emperor makes for fascinating reading but also increasingly disturbing reading as it is becoming ever easier to discover parallels with the progress of the 2024 Presidential Race in the Disunited States of America. And I fear that Octavian was actually quite a decent emperor and the crowning of Emperor Donald Caesar Trump will short-circuit the History Repetition Circuit many decades to the era of Caligula etc.
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Octavian was an effective but ruthless emperor. His record in the civil wars after GJ Caesar's death was bloody. However, he ruled carefully and wisely in the snakepit of Rome. His great advantages included his fixer Agrippa, his administrator Maecenas and his wife and counsellor, Livia Drusilla. The four of them together were unbeatable. Without such a team, it would have been very difficult for Augustus to have lasted so long. A lesson for us all.
