Julius Caesar and Augustus

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how, although both Julius Caesar and Augustus improvised political strategies to support their respective dominance of the Roman world, Augustus was successful while Julius Caesar was not due to the respect that Augustus paid to the formalities and conventions of Roman political life. The paper looks at how Julius Caesar relied on the overt exercise of power and relegated the senate to a marginal position in the state and how, in comparison, Augustus employed power in covert ways and understood that he could retain absolute power as long as he paid "lip service" to republican values.

From the Paper:

"The office of "dictator" in the Roman Republic was a position that granted its holder extraordinary powers. It was thus rarely granted by the state, and usually in times of emergency when a unified command was critical to the survival of Rome. However, given the echoes of absolute royal power in this office, Romans carefully limited the powers of the office to six months or the duration of the emergency; whichever was shorter (BGT 26-27). Julius Caesar, in his calculated political improvisation in a time of Civil War, relied heavily upon repeated grants of the dictatorship to give a veneer of legitimacy and legal authority to his supreme military and political power. In February 44, Caesar finally decided to assume the dictatorship for life as a matter of convenience (BGT 160)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Boatwright, Mary, Gargola, Daniel and Talbert, Richard. A Brief History of the Romans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Reader. Prescribed Course Readings: CLA 231. Ed. T.D. Barnes.

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