Augustus Quotes

“Rome became a republic in 509 B.C., after driving out its king and abolishing the monarchy. The next two centuries saw a long struggle for power between a group of noble families, patricians, and ordinary citizens, plebeians, who were excluded from public office. The outcome was a apparent victory for the people, but the old aristocracy, supplemented by rich pledeian nobles, still controlled the state. What looked in many ways like democracy was, in fact, an oligarcy modified by elections.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“He had become a well-loved figure in Apollonia and many of its citizens came to his house begging him to stay.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Turn not your country’s hand against your country’s heart!”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Livy’s worldview was moral and romantic, and most thinking people of his age shared it. In the preface to his magnum opus, he stated that writing history was a way of escaping the troubles of the modern world: “Of late years wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us, through every kind of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death both individual and collective.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“The optimates, the “best people,” represented conservative opinion, traditional values, and a collegiate approach to politics. They resented any challenge to the ruling oligarchy and, because they controlled the Senate, were able to block reform. The optimates’ opponents, the populares, claimed to stand, as their nickname suggests, for the interests of the Roman people, of the citizenry at large. Although some of the populares were genuine reformers, others were simply ambitious individualists.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Eventually, only one person was left beside the ashes—Julia Augusta, widow and now daughter of the dead princeps.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Now that Livia had become Julia Augusta, she had an official constitutional position”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Tiberius was persuaded to remain silent. The matter was closed.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“The ringleader was a young Germanic chieftain, known to us only by his Romanized name of Arminius.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“It was September and rain was falling. The territory west of the river Weser through which the Romans marched was a mix of wetlands,”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Tiberius and Drusus decided to prevent a future Alpine revolt by a simple but brutal means: mass deportations”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“This would eliminate the salient and create a border roughly in a straight line between the North Sea and the Black Sea.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“The first and foremost of these was the tomb of Alexander the Great, which stood at the crossroads of the city’s two main avenues.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“However, a coin of Antony’s, issued at Tarentum, shows Antony’s and Octavia’s heads facing each other:”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“It was divided into ten cohorts, which were in turn subdivided into six centuries commanded by centurions;”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Nobody was greatly bothered when it was noticed that Gnaeus’ little brother, Sextus, had slipped away”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“The Julii traced their ancestry to before the city’s foundation, traditionally set at 753 B.C.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Perhaps the most instructive aspect of Augustus’ approach to politics was his twin recognition that in the long run power was unsustainable without consent, and that consent could best be won by associating radical constitutional change with a traditional and moralizing ideology.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Augustus lacked the flair of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, but he possessed one valuable quality to which Caesar could not lay claim: patience. He had the practical common sense of an Italian country gentleman, for it was from that stock that he grew. He made haste slowly, seeking permanent solutions rather than easy answers. He did not revel in power; he sought to understand it. Plutarch has an anecdote that sums up Augustus’ approach to his responsibilities. Hearing that Alexander the Great had been at a loss about what to do next after his vast conquests, the princeps remarked: “I am surprised the king did not realize that a far harder task than winning an empire is putting it into order once you have won it.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“A.D. 15, Germanicus led an army across the Rhine and visited the battle sites where Varus lost his legions and his life. Tacitus gave an unforgettable description of the eerie scene: On the open ground were whitening bones, scattered where men had fled, heaped up where they had stood and fought back. Fragments of spears and of horses’ limbs lay there—also human heads, fastened to tree-trunks. In groves nearby were the outlandish altars at which the Germans had massacred the Roman colonels and senior company-commanders.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Perhaps his rage expressed an unspoken, unadmitted bitterness at the truth that he had bought his high place in the world by subduing the claims of affection to the imperatives of power.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“If we could get on without a wife, Romans, we would all avoid that annoyance; but since nature has ordained that we can neither live very comfortably with them nor at all without them, we must take thought for our lasting well-being rather than for the pleasure of the moment.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“For him, bravery was not an assertion of collective defiance and solidarity among colleagues but a solitary, obstinate act of will.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Brutus was high-minded, an intellectual who took ideas seriously. He saw the assassination of Caesar as a sacrifice rather than a political act. He was a man with “a singularly gentle nature,” who feared civil war almost (although not quite) as much as tyranny.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Whoever makes his journey to a tyrant’s court Becomes his slave, although he went there a free man.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“You must show yourself a man now and consider what you ought to do, and implement your plans as fortune and opportunity allow.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Tiberius outlasted her only by eight years, and expired old and lonely in his island retreat in A.D. 37.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Livia died in A.D. 29 at the considerable age of eighty-six.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“Augustus’ body was laid on a pyre in the ustrinum, or crematorium, next to the mausoleum.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“pay the ferryman to carry Augustus’ spirit across the river Styx to the underworld.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor