9 of history's best quotes

History Extra

Queen Victoria, who reportedly said "We are not amused". (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Neil Armstrong: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”

 

On 20 July 1969, as Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon, he marked the momentous event with this iconic statement. 

 

After jumping more than three feet down from his spacecraft Apollo 11 onto the moon’s surface and issuing his immortal words, Armstrong explored the moon’s surface for two-and-a-half hours along with fellow American astronaut Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin. The pair made their mark by planting an American flag and a plaque that read, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind".

 

Interestingly, though, the words uttered by Armstrong in that historic moment are in fact a misquote. After a safe journey home Armstrong told the press that what he had actually said – or intended to – was, “That’s one small step for a man”. The indefinite article was lost over the crackling audio connection – a small omission that led to a significant change in the quote’s meaning. Armstrong acknowledged this, saying that “The ‘a’ was intended. I thought I said it”. Yet since the misquote had already been repeated the world over, Armstrong was forced to concede “I can’t hear it when I listen on the radio reception here on earth, so I’ll be happy if you just put it in parentheses”.

 

^{American astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon as commander of the Apollo 11 lunar mission. (MPI/Getty Images)}

 

Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake!”

 

According to popular legend, this flippant remark was Marie Antoinette’s response to being told that the French people were starving and they could not afford bread. The quote, widely attributed to her, has become a symbol of the callous decadence of France’s monarchy on the eve of the French Revolution (1789–99).

 

Antoinette was famed for her extravagant lifestyle, and her exclamation of “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" (which actually translates more literally to ‘let them eat brioche’ or a enriched, egg-based bread) was seen as damning mockery of the plight of her people. 

 

It is now generally accepted, though, that Antoinette most likely never uttered these famous words. Instead they are thought to have been attributed to her by revolutionary propaganda keen to portray her as ignorant, distant and uncaring. Writing for History Revealed magazine, Emily Brand has suggested that the expression in fact pre-dates Antoinette. It is first referenced as the words “of a great princess” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1766 treatise Confessions, written when Antoinette was only 11 years old. Brand argues the saying was only linked to Antoinette 50 years after her execution in 1793. 

 

But while this quote may not in reality have been uttered by Antoinette, the phrase had sticking power because of the popular perception, whether justified or not, of the French queen as outrageously extravagant and insensitive to the struggles of her people.

 

^{Marie Antoinette in a 1775 portrait by Jean-Baptiste Gautier Dagoty. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)}
 

Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches… we shall never surrender”

 

Over the course of his political career, Winston Churchill delivered many iconic speeches in the face of war and hardship. From “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” (1940) to “An iron curtain has descended across the continent” (1946), Churchill has been recognised as one of history’s most inspiring speakers.

 

Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” quote was part of a grave yet rousing speech given by the prime minister in the aftermath the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation. Churchill’s words were arguably fundamental in transforming the event in the popular imagination from a humiliating defeat into a miraculous triumph of bravery and determination. Indeed, Churchill’s words – which are often misquoted as “we shall fight them on the beaches” – have been immortalised as an example of Britain’s plucky ‘Blitz spirit’ in the face of adversity.

 

A frequently misremembered fact about the “We shall fight on the beaches” speech is that Churchill did not originally read it out over the nation’s airwaves. He delivered the speech unrecorded to the House of Commons and sections of it were later read out by a BBC radio announcer. The famous recording we recognise today was not actually made until nine years later in 1949, when it was thought that Churchill's words should be set down for posterity. 

 

^{Churchill delivering his “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech over BBC radio in 1940. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)}

 

Queen Victoria: “We are not amused”

 

The story goes that this famous line was Queen Victoria’s retort to a risqué anecdote told by a tactless guest at a Windsor dinner party. In this version of events the “we” is intended, not as the royal “we”, but as a reference to all the ladies present who were unimpressed by such vulgar behaviour. Disappointingly, though, it is not clear whether this story stems from historical fact or just appealing urban legend. 

 

“We are not amused” has perhaps had such sticking power because it is emblematic of the public image of Victoria in her later years – a po-faced, dumpy woman dressed in black. The quote fits neatly with this straitlaced portrayal of her and also provides a handy epithet for popular ideas about Victorian society being stuffy and uptight.

 

The association of Victoria with the humourless quote arguably portrays the monarch in an unfair light. Writing for the Washington Post, historian Kate Williams has suggested that “dour” photos of Victoria, (the first photographed monarch) – taken before people learned how to pose – “unfairly colour our view of her”. Williams claims that Victoria was “full of passion for life, forgiving of moral peccadilloes” and “always loved laughter and jokes”. She was, in fact, often amused.

 

^{A photograph of Queen Victoria c1887. (Alexander Bassano/Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)}

 

Julius Caesar: “I came, I saw, I conquered”

 

Translated from the Latin “Veni, Vidi, Vici”, this line is attributed to Roman emperor Julius Caesar, who supposedly used it to boast of his military success.

 

According to ancient accounts, Caesar sent the three-word message to Rome in 47 BC to report on his victory over Pharnaces II of Pontus in the battle of Zela. Despite being significantly outnumbered at Zela, Caesar managed to crush the Pontic forces. His five-day campaign proved a swift, decisive victory that saw Pharnaces subdued by Caesar’s military might. 

 

According to Roman historian Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars (AD 121) the “Veni, Vidi, Vici” slogan was also inscribed on placards during the ‘Pontic triumph’ – a public procession in celebration of Caesar’s return to Rome following his military victory.

 

In his Life of Caesar, Greek biographer Plutarch (c46–120 AD) writes that “In Latin the words have the same inflectional ending, and so a brevity which is most impressive”.  

 

^{Bust of Julius Caesar. (National Museum in Naples/Bettman/Getty)}

 

FDR: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”

 

These famous words were spoken during Franklin D Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, delivered at the United States Capitol, Washington DC on 4 March 1933. Following an election victory over republican Herbert Hoover in 1932, Roosevelt became the 32nd president of the United States. Known as ‘FDR’, he went on to become the first president to serve a total of four terms. 

 

Elected during the depths of America’s Great Depression, Roosevelt made his 20-minute address a solemn and resolved affair. It tackled head-on the nation’s economic crisis and unemployment, blaming the “callous and selfish wrongdoing” of bankers and businessmen. This quote, which goes on to describe “fear itself” as the “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed effort to convert retreat into advance” appeared near the very beginning of Roosevelt’s address. Contemporaries understood it as a pointed attack on the damaged and pessimistic American mindset of the time, which had been dealt a heavy blow by the economic crash.

 

Broadcast to tens of millions of Americans over national radio networks, FDR’s speech was generally accepted as a dynamic and inspiring promise to get America back on track. 

 

^{President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his first inaugural address at the Capitol in 1933. (George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)}

 

Oscar Wilde: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”

 

This remark, from Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, is just one example of reams of quotable material from the celebrated writer, conversationalist and wit. 

 

Wilde’s comic plays made a satire of the contradictions and petty manners of polite Victorian society. Works including The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) and An Ideal Husband (1895) are full of the wry observances and witty aphorisms for which Wilde is best known. Dozens of his phrases, including “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”; “Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much” and “I have nothing to declare but my genius” have proven enduringly popular.

 

In 2007 Wilde was voted Britain’s greatest wit in a poll of more than 3,000 comedy fans, beating to the top spot Spike Milligan, Winston Churchill and Noel Coward. The Irish-born Wilde was wisecracking until the very end, reportedly quipping on his Parisian deathbed in November 1900, “Either those curtains go, or I do”.

 

^{Colourised photograph of Oscar Wilde from around 1870. (Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images)}

 

Queen Elizabeth I:  “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too”

 

This assertion of royal power from Elizabeth I was part of a rousing speech delivered by the queen in one of England’s darkest moments, as the nation faced the threat of imminent attack from the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth’s rallying cry was intended to motivate the English troops assembled at Tilbury in August 1588 as they awaited the arrival of an unprecedented Spanish invasion force. Through her words the queen clearly portrayed herself as a warrior ready to fight for her nation.

 

Accounts portray Elizabeth addressing her troops atop a white steed, wearing a helmet and cutlass. Despite the threat to her safety, the queen allegedly refused to return to London, instead resolving to stay at the English army camp at Tilbury. She reportedly declared that she would “not think of deserting her army at a time of danger”. 

 

Writing for History Extra in 2015, Robert Hutchinson revealed that although the speech elsewhere pledges that “shortly we shall have a famous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people’’, in reality it was probably not delivered in a moment of imminent danger. Hutchinson suggests that Elizabeth’s stirring words only reached her men after the Armada was already in retreat. The words were recorded by royal courtier Lionel Sharp and later repeated to the army.

 

^{Elizabeth I of England is depicted riding a horse as she reviews her troops at Tilbury, c1560. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

 

Eleanor Roosevelt: “Women are like teabags – you don’t know how strong they are until you put them in hot water” 

 

While her husband, Franklin D Roosevelt, was serving as US president between 1933 and 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt redefined the role of first lady through her active engagement in politics. An outspoken social campaigner and early ambassador of the United Nations, Eleanor was also engaged in human rights work, playing a significant role in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

 

Many inspirational quotes have been attributed to Eleanor, including “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”; “Do one thing every day that scares you” and “It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself”.


 

Her “Women are like teabags” quote seems to draw on several older variations of the idea, including “A man is like an egg, the longer he is kept in hot water the harder he is when taken out”, which appeared in an 1858 Boston newspaper, and “Men are like potatoes; they do not know how soon they may be in hot water”, from an 1870 Dublin newspaper.

 

While there is little concrete evidence that Eleanor spoke the original quote, it is now widely attributed to her. The adage is reportedly a favourite of presidential candidate Hilary Clinton, who herself recently ascribed it to Eleanor.

 

^{Eleanor Roosevelt listening through headphones during a UN conference in New York. (Keystone/Getty Images)}

The death of Caesar: do we know the whole story?

History Extra

A bust of Gaius Julius Caesar. By March 44 BC, the great general had made some powerful enemies by increasingly acting like a monarch. © Alamy

What do you say, Caesar? Will someone of your stature pay attention to the dreams of a woman and the omens of foolish men?” So said Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus to Gaius Julius Caesar. The 36-year-old Decimus spoke frankly to a man his elder by nearly 20 years, a man who was not only his chief but also Rome’s Dictator for Life. Yet Caesar was fond of Decimus, a longtime comrade-in-arms and a trusted lieutenant, and so he let him speak. They met in Caesar’s official residence in the heart of Rome.
It was the morning of 15 March 44 BC – the Ides, as the Romans called the approximate middle of each month: the Ides of March. The Senate was in session that day, its members eagerly awaiting the dictator’s arrival. Yet Caesar had decided not to attend – allegedly because of bad health but, in fact, the real cause was a series of ill omens that had terrified his wife, Calpurnia.
Decimus changed Caesar’s mind. Caesar decided to go to the Senate meeting after all, if only to announce a postponement in person. What he didn’t know was that more than 60 conspirators were waiting for him there, their daggers ready. Decimus, however, was all too aware – he was one of the plots’ ringleaders, and his actions that morning were about to change the course of history.
Despite this, most historians have traditionally cast Brutus and Cassius as the brains behind the conspiracy. In doing so, they’ve followed the lead of Plutarch, who wrote 150 years after the assassination, and Shakespeare, who drew most of his story from Plutarch. They tend to omit Decimus, who Shakespeare misnames ‘Decius’ and mentions only in the scene described above. Yet Decimus was key. His motives are less opaque than most think and his behaviour shows just how well organised the conspirators were.
The earliest surviving, detailed source for Caesar’s assassination makes Decimus the leader of the conspiracy. Sometime within a few decades of the Ides of March, Nicolaus of Damascus, a scholar and bureaucrat, wrote a Life of Caesar Augustus – that is, of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor (reigned 27 BC–AD 14). A later abridgment of this work survives and it focuses on the assassination.
Until recently, scholars have tended to dismiss Nicolaus because he worked for Augustus and so had a motive to attack the conspirators. But recent work suggests that Nicolaus was a brilliant student of human nature who deserves more attention. A series of letters between Decimus and Cicero, all written after the assassination, also shed light on the plot, but they too have been neglected.

_{This coin, issued by Brutus, one of the plot’s ringleaders, displays the military daggers employed against Caesar. © Topfoto}

Things turn sour

Unlike Brutus and Cassius, Decimus was Caesar’s man. In the civil war between Caesar and the Roman general Pompey (49–45 BC), Brutus and Cassius both supported Pompey and then later changed sides. By contrast, Decimus backed Caesar from start to finish. During the conflict, Caesar appointed Decimus as his lieutenant to govern Gaul in his absence. At the war’s end in 45 BC, Decimus left Gaul and returned to Italy with Caesar.
Then things turned sour. Between September 45 BC and March 44 BC Decimus changed his mind about Caesar. We don’t know why but it probably had more to do with power than principle. Decimus’s letters to Cicero reveal a polite if terse man of action with a keen sense of honour, a nose for betrayal, and a thirst for vengeance.
Perhaps what moved Decimus was the sight of the two triumphal parades in Rome in autumn 45 BC that Caesar allowed his lieutenants in Spain to celebrate, against all custom. Caesar did not, however, grant a similar privilege to Decimus for his victory over a fierce Gallic tribe.
Or perhaps it was Caesar’s appointment of his grandnephew Octavian (as Augustus was then known) as his second-in-command in a new war in 44 BC against Parthia (roughly, ancient Iran), Rome’s rival in the eastern Mediterranean. Decimus meanwhile had to stay behind and govern Italian Gaul.
Whatever his motives, once he turned on Caesar, Decimus was indispensable. He was both the plotters’ chief of security and their leading spy. As the only conspirator in Caesar’s inner circle, Decimus was a mole, able to report on what Caesar was thinking. What’s more, Decimus controlled a troupe of gladiators, which played a key role on the Ides.
Caesar remained in Rome between October 45 and March 44 BC – his longest stay there for years. He never revealed a programme but his actions betrayed that he aimed to change Rome’s government. He behaved in ever-more dictatorial ways, summed up in his adoption of the unprecedented title of Dictator for Life.
He maintained Rome’s traditional republican magistracies but elections increasingly became mere formalities – Caesar had the real power of appointment. Consuls, praetors (magistrates) and senators saw power shifting to Caesar’s secretaries and advisors – some of them had only recently become Roman citizens; some were even freedmen (former slaves). Caesar was not a king, but he had acquired the equivalent of royal power.
There was another issue at play here – the prospect of what would happen after Caesar’s death. To his critics, the favour he showed to Octavian raised the terrifying prospect of a dynasty.
Some Romans responded to Caesar’s growing power with flattery. They voted him a long stream of honours including, most egregiously, naming him a god, with plans afoot for priests and a temple. Others, however, decided that he had to be stopped, and so they decided on assassination. True, they acted in the name of the Republic and liberty and against a budding monarchy but they also saw in his growing influence a threat to their own power and privilege.
Plans to assassinate Caesar are attested as early as the summer of 45 BC but the conspiracy that struck on the Ides of March did not gel until February 44 BC. At least 60 men joined it (of whom we can identify just 20 today – and some of them are little more than names). According to a later writer, Seneca, the majority of the conspirators were not Caesar’s enemies – former allies of Pompey – but his friends and supporters.
That certainly can’t be said for Brutus and Cassius, the best-known conspirators. Cassius was a military man and a former Pompey supporter who despised Caesar’s dictatorial ways. As for Brutus, he was hardly the friend of Caesar whom Shakespeare depicts.
Brutus’s mother was Caesar’s former mistress. However, Brutus supported Pompey until the latter lost to Caesar on the battlefield in 48 BC, at which point Brutus switched sides. He promptly betrayed his ex-chief by providing Caesar intelligence about the likely whereabouts of Pompey, who had escaped after the battle. Afterwards, Caesar rewarded Brutus with high office.
This, however, was to prove the high point of Caesar and Brutus’s relationship. In the summer of 45 BC, Brutus divorced his wife and remarried. His new bride was Porcia, his cousin and, far more pertinently to this story, daughter of Caesar’s late archenemy Cato.
Crucially, in the winter of 44 BC, Caesar’s opponents began calling on Brutus to uphold the tradition of his ancestors, who included the founder of the Roman Republic, Lucius Junius Brutus, the man who had led the expulsion of Rome’s kings hundreds of years earlier. And so, through a combination of pride, principle – and, perhaps, love for his wife – Brutus turned on Caesar.

_{A posse of senators stab Caesar to death in Vincenzo Camuccini’s painting, completed in c1798. The plot succeeded, says Barry Strauss, because it was planned with military precision: after isolating their victim, the assassins acted rapidly and ruthlessly. © Getty} 

Military precision

The plot to assassinate Caesar succeeded because it was meticulously planned, and flawlessly executed. With generals such as Decimus, Cassius and Caesar’s veteran commander Trebonius involved, one would expect nothing less than military precision. The assassins chose to end Caesar’s life themselves rather than by hiring killers – a decision that showed their seriousness of purpose. And by striking at a Senate meeting they made it a public act rather than a private vendetta – an assassination and not a murder.
That this was a professional operation is even reflected in the killers’ choice of weapon. Caesar’s assassins attacked him with daggers and not, as is sometimes imagined, with swords. The latter were too big to sneak into the Senate House and too unwieldy for use in close quarters. In particular, the killers used a military dagger (the pugio), which was becoming standard issue for legionaries.
Military daggers were not only practical weapons but also honourable ones. Caesar’s supporters later called the assassins common criminals and accused them of using sicae, a short, curved blade that had the negative connotation of a switchblade or flick knife. So, in 44 BC, Brutus issued a coin that celebrated the Ides of March with two military daggers. Again, he wanted to show that the assassins were no mere murderers.
The Roman Senate House still stands in the Roman Forum and most visitors assume that Caesar was killed there – but he was not, nor on the Capitoline Hill, as Shakespeare states. The assassination took place about half a mile away from the Forum in Pompey’s Senate House, ironically built by Caesar’s great rival. It was part of a huge complex including a theatre, a park, a covered portico, and shops and offices. Gladiatorial games took place in the theatre on the Ides of March, which gave Decimus an excuse for deploying his gladiators near Pompey’s Senate House. Their real purpose was as a backup security force.
As a general, Caesar had a bodyguard but he made a point of dismissing it after returning to civilian life in Rome. He wanted to seem accessible and fearless. What’s more, only senators could enter a Senate meeting, so most of Caesar’s retinue would have had to remain outside the building. This made the dictator uniquely vulnerable inside the Senate House. Still, Caesar had appointed many of the senators personally, and they included military men. If they came to Caesar’s aid, they could overwhelm the assassins.
The assassins’ response to this threat was to attack at speed, isolating their target before striking. Even before Caesar took his seat on the tribunal, several assassins stood behind the chair while others surrounded him as if trying to grab his attention. The truth is that they were forming a perimeter.
Then the attack sprang into action. Tillius Cimber, a hard-drinking scrapper of a soldier whom Caesar favoured, held his hands out disrespectfully and pulled at Caesar’s toga. At this signal, his co-conspirators struck, led by Publius Servilius Casca.
Caesar immediately called out to Cimber, “Why, this is violence”, and hurled an oath at Casca, labelling him either “impious” or “accursed”. However, he never said: “Et tu, Brute?” (“You too, Brutus?”) – that phrase is a Renaissance invention. Ancient authors report a rumour that Caesar said to Brutus, in Greek: “You too, child.” But they doubt that he even said that.
Caesar, the old warrior, tried to fight back. He stabbed Casca with his stylus – a small, pointed, iron writing utensil – and managed to get back up. Two of his supporters among the senators, Lucius Marcius Censorinus and Gaius Calvisius Sabinus, then attempted to reach him but the conspirators blocked their way, and forced them to flee.
Meanwhile, Trebonius had been assigned to buttonhole his old comrade Mark Antony and engage him in conversation outside the Senate’s door. Antony was a veteran soldier, strong, dangerous and loyal to Caesar. If he’d entered the Senate room, he would have sat on the tribunal with Caesar and could have come to his aid.
With Mark Antony detained by Trebonius, there was little Caesar could do to defend himself. It probably took only minutes for him to die – succumbing to what most of the sources state were 23 wounds. Before the end, he wrapped his toga around his face and, in an ironic turn of events, fell at the foot of a statue of his rival, Pompey.
For all its brilliance, the plot to kill Caesar didn’t prove the panacea that the assassins hoped. Civil war soon broke out again and, to a man, they were to suffer violent deaths. What’s more, the Republic that they aimed to defend perished and gave way to an empire. That, however, does not brand them as foolish idealists. It merely shows that their political acumen did not match the military skill they displayed on the Ides of March.

In context: Caesar

By 44 BC Gaius Julius Caesar was the most famous and controversial man in Rome. A populist political star and great writer, he excelled in the military realm as well, pulling off a lightning conquest of Gaul – roughly, France and Belgium – as well as invading Britain and Germany (58–50 BC). When his enemies, the old guard in the Senate, removed him from command, Caesar invaded Italy. He went on to total victory in a civil war (49–45 BC) that ranged across the Mediterranean. His challenge now was to reconcile his surviving enemies and to convince staunch republicans to accept his power as dictator. It was a daunting task.

Barry Strauss (@barrystrauss) is a professor of history and classics at Cornell University.

History Trivia - Octavian founds Roman Empire

January 23

7 BC, Augustus Caesar (Octavian) founded the Roman Empire that would last until A.D. 476.  Octavian was granted the title 'Augustus', meaning lofty or serene, by the Roman senate.

The bloody rise of Augustus

History Extra

The statue of Imperator Caesar Augustus © AKG Images

Before his death 2,000 years ago in August AD 14, the ageing Roman emperor Augustus composed a political statement that recorded his unprecedented bid for power, half a century earlier. “At the age of 19 on my own responsibility and at my own expense I raised an army, with which I successfully championed the liberty of the republic when it was oppressed by the tyranny of a faction.”
The events to which he was referring began on the Ides of March 44 BC when Roman dictator Julius Caesar was murdered by the self-proclaimed ‘liberators’. It was only at Caesar’s funeral that it was discovered that his great-nephew Augustus – then called Caius Octavius and from an obscure family – had been named as the murdered ruler’s principal heir.
The teenager chose to interpret this legacy as full adoption, and announced that he intended to succeed not simply to Caesar’s wealth and name, but also to his high office. That was not the way politics normally worked in Rome, but these were disturbed times, with the old Republican system of elected magistrates crumbling after decades of violent competition and spells of civil war.
The young Augustus used Caesar’s money and name to start raising an army from serving or former soldiers of his charismatic ‘father’. Mark Antony (one of Caesar’s leading subordinates) was already trying to rally the same people to him and did not take his young rival seriously, dubbing him “a boy who owes everything to a name”.
A Senate urged on by the famous orator Cicero saw Antony as the big threat and feared that he was aiming to seize supreme power by force. In a political system where a man had to be in his forties before he could seek the highest offices of the state, a 19-year-old with no political record seemed to present little danger. Cicero saw a teenager at the head of legions of veteran soldiers and decided that he could be useful. They should “praise the young man, reward him, and discard him”.
At first it went well, and Augustus’s veterans played the key role in defeating Antony and driving his army across the Alps. Discarding the young Augustus, however, proved difficult, for his soldiers served him and not the Senate. In the meantime Antony allied with another of Caesar’s old supporters, Lepidus, and so became stronger than ever. Augustus now decided to join them, so that all of the murdered dictator’s supporters and soldiers were on the same side – at least for the moment. They declared a triumvirate – a board of three supreme magistrates to restore the state, and effectively a joint dictatorship.
The first thing the triumvirs did was to order the murder of prominent opponents including Cicero. Marching unopposed into Rome, they posted up proscription lists with names of men who were set outside the protection of law. Anyone could kill a proscribed man, and if they brought his severed head to the authorities they would be rewarded with a share of the victim’s property, the rest going to the triumvirs to pay their army. Antony, Augustus and Lepidus traded names in a scene brought chillingly to life by Shakespeare: “These many, then, shall die, their names are pricked.”
Quite a few of the proscribed managed to escape abroad, but hundreds died. In later years there was a whole genre of stories of dramatic escapes and grim deaths, of rescue and betrayal. The senator Velleius Paterculus concluded that “…one thing, however, demands comment, that toward the proscribed their wives showed greatest loyalty, their freedmen not a little, their slaves some, their sons none”.
Opinion was less certain about which of the triumvirs was most brutal in their pursuit of the proscribed, as after the event each tried to shift the blame to his allies. Yet many were shocked that the young Augustus should have had so many enemies he wanted to kill. In the years that followed, a reputation for excessive cruelty clung to him, helped by the frequency with which impassioned pleas for mercy were met with a simple: “You must die.”
Antony and Augustus took an army to Greece and defeated two of Caesar’s murderers, Brutus and Cassius, at the battle of Philippi in 42 BC. Antony got most of the credit, both for winning the war and treating captured aristocrats and the remains of the dead with fitting respect.
The alliance between the three triumvirs was always based on self interest and came under increasing pressure in the years that followed. It narrowly survived a rebellion led by Antony’s brother Lucius against Augustus, and, after a long struggle, defeated Sextus Pompeius, the son of Julius Caesar’s former ally, son-in-law, and finally enemy, Pompey the Great. By 36 BC the triumvirate became an alliance between two when Lepidus was marginalised. Augustus kept him in comfortable captivity for the rest of his life, a gesture that mixed mercy with cruelty as it prolonged the humiliation of an ambitious man.

The dispossessed

Mark Antony was placed in charge of Rome’s provinces and allies in the eastern Mediterranean after the clash at Philippi. Augustus remained in Italy, where he carried out the task of providing the farms promised as rewards to the triumvirs’ loyal soldiers.
The estates of the proscribed were insufficient, and so more and more confiscations were arbitrarily imposed on the towns of Italy. The local gentry suffered the most, leading the poet Virgil to write of the plight of the dispossessed: “Ah, shall I ever, long years hence, look again on my country’s bounds, on my humble cottage with its turf-clad roof?… Is an impious soldier to hold these well-tilled fallows?… See where strife has brought our unhappy citizens!”
Augustus got most of the blame for the confiscations in an Italy exhausted by civil war and desperate for stability. As relations with Antony broke down, it was better to wage war against a foreign threat, and so Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, was demonised as a sinister eastern temptress who had corrupted a noble Roman, and turned him against his own people. (In 41 BC, Antony had taken the queen as a lover, renewing the affair three years later). Privately few were fooled, but publicly the ‘whole of Italy’ took an oath to follow Augustus and save Rome from this ‘threat’.
Relations between the remaining triumvirs deteriorated until, in 31 BC, the two clashed in battle at Actium in Greece. Antony was defeated and took his own life the next year.
With Antony dead, the 33-year-old Augustus faced no serious rivals and, since he took care to monopolise military force, there was no real danger of new challengers appearing. However, that did not mean that the man who had slaughtered his way to power was safe from assassins’ knives, or that it would be easy to create a stable regime.
There was little affection for Augustus, but Romans of all classes were desperate for peace, and hoped simply to be able to live without fear of proscription lists and confiscations. This security is what he gave them. His control was veiled, expressed in a way that appeared constitutional, even though the veil was thin since no one could take his powers from him or break his hold over the loyalty of the legions. What mattered was that years and then decades passed, and stability and the rule of law persisted as it had not done in living memory.
Peace and the simple virtues of an idealised and now restored past dominate the art and literature of these years. It is also no coincidence that one of the most striking monuments of the Augustan age is the Ara Pacis – the altar of peace (shown below).

The peace that Italy enjoyed (after generations of civil strife) did not mean Rome was no longer at war. For at the same time, Augustus boasted of victory after victory won over foreign rulers and peoples, often adding new territory to the empire.
Augustus presented himself as the greatest servant of the state, and defeating external enemies was a glorious means of service. He also laboured untiringly and publicly to restore good government throughout the empire, spending his days receiving petitions and resolving the problems long neglected by the inertia of the Senate under the Republic.
Rome itself – and, to a degree, communities across Italy and the provinces – was physically renewed, so that Augustus could boast that he had found the city “brick and left it marble”. There were monuments to his glory, but many of them were also practical amenities for the wider good, such as aqueducts, fountains and sewers, bath-houses for comfort, temples to restore a proper relationship with the gods who protected the Roman people, and theatres and circuses for entertainment.
Life was more stable under Augustus, and for most people it was also more comfortable. No one was left in any doubt that this happy condition relied upon his continued activity, for Augustus’s name and image was everywhere. Relief at the end of civil war slowly became more or less grudging gratitude and eventually turned into genuine affection.
Time played an important part. Augustus ruled for 40 years after the death of Antony, and everyone became used to his leadership and the system he had created, while the memories of his bloody rise to power gradually faded. There was no enthusiasm to swap the present peace and prosperity for a return to the violently unpredictable decades preceding it. Honour after honour was voted to him by the Senate and people, including the title of Father of his Country.
Thanks to this reincarnation as a man of peace, Augustus – the first emperor of Rome – would for centuries also be remembered as one of the best.

 

Augustus's life and times

23 September 63 BC

Augustus is born with the name Caius Octavius. His father is a member of the country gentry and the first in the family to enter the Senate at Rome. His mother is Julius Caesar’s niece. Despite this, there is no reason to expect him to have an exceptional career.

15 March 44 BC
On the day Julius Caesar is murdered, Augustus is in Greece, receiving military training ahead of the dictator’s planned invasion of Parthia. A few days later, it emerges that Caesar has nominated Augustus as his principal heir.

43 BC
Having raised a private army and helped the Senate defeat his great rival Antony, Augustus leads his army back to Rome and demands to be elected consul. Soon afterwards, he joins Antony and Lepidus in the triumvirate.

36 BC

Relying heavily on the skill of his friend Agrippa, Augustus defeats the fleet of Sextus Pompey. The war has pushed Augustus to breaking point . After one defeat, he was cast ashore with a few attendants and considered suicide.

2 September 31 BC

Augustus, once again relying on Agrippa to command his forces, defeats Antony at the battle of Actium fought off the coast of Greece. Antony flees, with no hope of recovering from this disaster. Within a year, he and Cleopatra will kill themselves

16 January 27 BC

Caesar’s heir is given the name Augustus to honour him for his service to the state. He is now Imperator (or ‘generalissimo’) Caesar Augustus, a personal name without any precedent.

23 BC
Augustus falls seriously ill and is not expected to survive. He publicly hands his signet ring to Agrippa, but doesn’t name a successor to his position. He eventually recovers.

2 BC

Augustus is named Father of his Country by the Senate. Later in the year scandal rocks his family when he exiles Julia (above), his only child, for serial adultery.  Augustus has already adopted her two older sons with Agrippa, but both will die young, leaving Tiberius to succeed.

AD 9

Three Roman legions led by Varus are wiped out by allies turned enemies among the Germanic tribes at Teutoburg Forest. It is the most serious defeat of Augustus’s career. For days he roams the palace calling out: “Quinctilius Varus, return my legions!”

19 August AD 14

Augustus dies in a family villa at Nola. It’s later rumoured that he was poisoned by his wife, Livia (right), who feared that he planned to change the succession.  Augustus’s body is carried in state to Rome, and after a public funeral he is declared a god.

Seven other great rulers of Rome

The first dictator: Lucius Cornelius Sulla (c138–79 BC)

In 88 BC Sulla was the first Roman commander to turn his legions against the city of Rome and seize power by force. After fighting a war in the east, he returned in 83 BC and stormed the city a second time. He made himself dictator – turning a temporary emergency measure into the basis for long-term power – and created the first proscriptions, posting up death lists in the Forum, that named hundreds of his opponents.

The iconic general: Caius Julius Caesar (100–44 BC)

Caesar was Augustus’s great-uncle and joined in an informal alliance with Pompey and Crassus, the two most important men in the state. In 49 BC Pompey and Caesar became rivals when the latter crossed the Rubicon and began a new civil war. Caesar won, and copied Sulla by using the dictatorship as the basis of his power. When this was made permanent, he was murdered by conspirators including Brutus and Cassius.

The unpopular heir: Tiberius (42 BC–AD 37, emperor from AD 14)

Augustus’s stepson Tiberius was not first choice as successor, but was adopted in AD 4 after the deaths of Augustus’s grandsons. By the time of Tiberius’s succession, few people were able to imagine a world without an emperor. Tiberius was unpopular and far less active than Augustus. Yet the imperial system became even more firmly established during his rule.

The bon vivant: Nero (AD 37–68, emperor from 54)

Nero was the last of the four members of Augustus’s extended family to rule. A teenager when he came to power, he was fonder of luxury and performance than government. Yet his ability to remain in power for 14 years testified to the affection for Augustus’s family and the acceptance of imperial rule as natural. In the end he lost the support of the army, followed by the Senate, and took his own life.

The outsider: Vespasian (AD 9–79, emperor from 69)

Vespasian was the fourth man to win power in a civil war that raged for over a year after Nero’s death. Neither related to Augustus nor from the old Roman aristocracy, he came from the local gentry of Italy. All of the powers accumulated by Augustus were awarded to Vespasian, and he was followed as emperor by his two sons in turn, giving the empire three decades of stability. He wasn’t loved, but he was widely respected.

The last conqueror: Trajan (AD 53–117, emperor from 98)

Trajan’s family were Roman citizens from Spain, making him the first non-Italian emperor. He was the last of the great conquerors, adding Dacia – modern-day Romania – to the empire in campaigns celebrated on Trajan’s Column still visible in Rome. In the last years of his life he invaded Parthia but most of his conquests there were abandoned by his successor, Emperor Hadrian.

The philosopher: Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180, emperor from 161)

The last of Edward Gibbon’s ‘five good emperors’, Marcus Aurelius was an earnest man, who wrote a philosophical work, The Meditations, and tried to rule virtuously and in the style set by Augustus. His reign was beset by a series of catastrophes, with warfare and plague ravaging the empire. After Aurelius’s reign, civil war would bedevil the empire for over a century.

Dr Adrian Goldsworthy's book, Augustus: From Revolutionary to Emperor, is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

History Trivia - The Parthenon in Athens severely damaged by a gunpowder explosion

Sept 26

 46 BC Julius Caesar dedicated a temple to his mythical ancestor Venus Genetrix in accordance with a vow he made at the battle of Pharsalus. 

1181 St. Francis of Assisi, Italian Founder of the Franciscan Order, was born. 

1687 The Parthenon in Athens, unscathed since 432 BC, was severely damaged by a gunpowder explosion, caused by the bombing from Venetian forces led by Morosini (Doge of Venice) who besieged the Ottoman Turks stationed in Athens.

History Trivia - Leonidas and his Spartan army defeated at Thermopylae

August 9

 480 BC The Persian army defeated Leonidas and his Spartan army at Thermopylae, Persia.

48 BC – Caesar's civil war: Battle of Pharsalus (Greece) – Julius Caesar decisively defeated Pompey at Pharsalus and Pompey fled to Egypt where he was later murdered. As a result Caesar had absolute control of Rome.

378 Gothic War: Battle of Adrianople – A large Roman army led by Emperor Valens was defeated by the Visigoths in present-day Turkey. Valens was killed along with over half of his army.

History Trivia -King Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, dies

April 6

 46 BC – Julius Caesar defeated Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato in the battle of Thapsus.

 402 Stilicho stymied the Visigoths under Alaric in the Battle of Pollentia.

774 Charles the Great affirmed Pippin's promise of Quiercy, protecting the States of the Church.

1199 England's King Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, died from an infection following the removal of an arrow from his shoulder.

1320 The Scots reaffirmed their independence by signing the Declaration of Arbroath.

1453 Mehmed II began his siege of Constantinople (Istanbul), which fell on May 29. 

1483 Raphael was born.

History Trivia - Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon - Pompey flees to Greece

January 10

 49 BC Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon without disbanding his army, which signaled the start of civil war in Rome. Pompey and his supporters fled to Greece.

 69 Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus was appointed by Galba to deputy Roman Emperor.

236 Pope Fabian succeeded Anterus as the twentieth pope of Rome.

1072 Robert Guiscard conquered Palermo.

1642 King Charles I & family fled London for Oxford.

1645 Archbishop William Laud was beheaded at the Tower of London because he opposed the radical forms of Puritanism and supported King Charles I during the British civil war.