This, for the man born Gaius Octavius, was the culmination of an entire career spent collecting impressive names. A Caesar at the age of nineteen, he had gone one better two years later when, following his adoptive father’s official deification, he had begun calling himself “Divi Filius”—“Son of a God.” Extraordinary though such a name was, it had evidently met with divine approval, for the career of Caesar Divi Filius had never ceased to be blessed with success. Now, as “Augustus,” he would be distinguished even further from the common run of mortals. The title would veil him like a nimbus in
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