Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

by Tom Holland

For generations Rome’s leading citizens had been tortured by the need to choose between self-interest and traditional ideals. Augustus, with his genius for squaring circles, simply made himself the patron of both. And he could do this because, like any star performer, he had the pick of roles he wanted. Only the reality could not be acknowledged: Augustus had no wish to end up murdered on the Senate House floor. Instead, with the willing collaboration of his fellow citizens, who flinched from staring the truth in the face, he veiled himself in robes garnered from the antique lumber box of the Republic, refusing any magistracy not sanctioned by the past, and often not holding any magistracy at all. Authority, not office, was what counted: that mysterious quality that had given to Catulus or to Cato his prestige. “In all the qualities that make up a man,” Cicero had once acknowledged, “M. Cato was first citizen.”35 “First citizen”—“princeps”: Augustus let it be known that he could wish for no prouder title. The son of Julius Caesar was to be regarded as the heir of Cato too. And he pulled it off. No wonder that Augustus boasted of his skills as an actor. Only a man with a supreme talent for dissimulation could have played such various parts so subtly—and with such success. On his signet ring the princeps carried the image of a sphinx—and throughout his career he posed his countrymen a riddle. The Romans were used to citizens who vaunted their power, who exulted in the brilli...