Real Dictators - Augustus Part 3: Birth of a Dynasty

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

With his enemies vanquished Octavian returns to a hero’s welcome. Consolidating personal rule over Rome’s vast dominions, he begins dismantling the old republic. The Senate declares him the most ���August” of Caesars, an Emperor. But the lack of an heir, once again, will plunge Rome into crisis… A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Lauren Ginsberg, David Gwynn, Neville Morley, Joyce Tyldesley. This is Part 3 of 3. Written by Jeff Dawson | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisors: Tom Pink, Matt Peaty | Sound design & audio editing by George Tapp | Assembly editing by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan | Recording engineer: Joseph McGann. Real Dictators will be back soon with the story of Rafael Trujillo. In the meantime, head to noiser.com to discover your next immersive history podcast. Limited time: download Supremacy: World War 3 for free via our link and get an exclusive Elite Bomber Seasonal Unit worth $25 - but only for the next 30 days: https://con.onelink.me/kZW6/6wtag9jg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At September the 28th, 1960, we're at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, 18 miles west of London. On the back lots, it's a recreation of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. It's been replicated in the finest detail, exactly how it would have appeared in the first century BC. Sprawling across 20 acres, it's a staggering piece of set design. There's a huge Ptolemaic palace. Six life-size sphinxes, buildings rendered in imitation sandstone, obelisks adorned with hieroglyphics. The boulevards aligned with real-life palm trees, or we had flown in from Los Angeles. To be titled simply Cleopatra, the film being made will star Elizabeth Taylor as the Egyptian queen.

Rex Harrison and Richard Burton will tow her up as Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. For 20th Century Fox, the giant Hollywood conglomerate behind the Enterprise, no expense has been spared. This is a movie on which it's staking its shirt. Just three days into filming and trouble has already come into paradise. There are arguments over the film's as yet unfinished script. Producers squaring up to each other. There are trade union disputes. Moreover, there is the stark reality of the decision to film this movie in the UK,

a decision undertaken for tax purposes. A sun-kissed Mediterranean playground, Buckinghamshire is not. Things are about to get worse. Words has just come in from the Dorchester Hotel, where Taylor is currently holed up. She's come down with pneumonia. In fact, Taylor's health will deteriorate to such an extent that the pine would will have to be shut down entirely. When the production relocates to Rome, a year and several million dollars later, it's enveloped in a whirl of chaos.

There's a new director, a revolving door of producers and screenwriters, a tempestuous affair now being conducted by Burton and the fit again Taylor. Amid tales of sex, drink, drugs and fisticoffs, and that's just the stars, Cleopatra is spiraling out of control. By the time of its eventual release, Cleopatra will have taken three years to film. At $44 million, nearly $500 million in today's money, this extravagant widescreen epic

will go down as the then most expensive movie ever made. In June 1963 in New York, the film will premiere to only so-so reviews. It will virtually bankrupt, Fox. Back at Pinewood, meanwhile, British comedy producers will commandeer the abandoned sets to make their own low-budget spoof. In Britain, carry-on Cleo will make back more money and prove more entertaining than the very film it's lampooning. Around the fringes of the Cleopatra saga, a sculpt the slight figure of someone called Octavian. As portrayed by actor Roddy McDowell, he is a fay, pey.

youth sickly much of the time. He has the whiff of a bit player, not a warrior hero in the malt of Caesar or Anthony. But in art, as in life, you underestimate Octavian at your peril. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is the final part of the Augustus story. And this is real dictators.

When we left Octavian, events in the real Alexandria had ensured, his supremacy over the Roman Republic. In just 13 years, Octavian has gone from obscurity to political and military dominance. But that is just a means to an end. Octavian's M.O. was always about something else. Revenge. By way of the second triumvirate, alongside Anthony and Lepardus, he had hunted down the assassins of Julius Caesar, his great uncle. Abroad, the Liberator armies were wiped out.

Back home, a bloody pogrom was instigated against all sympathizers. Later, when Mark Anthony went rogue, building his own Eastern Empire with his lover Cleopatra, Octavian pursued him too. After the climactic sea battle at Actium, Octavian harried the couple back to Egypt. There, they had committed suicide. He had also seen to the murder of Caesarean, Cleopatra's teenage son. Aged just 33, Octavian is the man. There is a spectre which haunts all Roman rulers, the ghost of Alexander the Great.

The king of Macedon, whose conquests were undertaken 300 years before, is the yardstick, by which all conquerors must be measured. Already dead by the age Octavian is now. He had marched undefeated from Greece to Egypt to India. Before leaving Alexandria, Octavian visits his crypt. In tribute, he places a crown upon the mummified corpse's head. Professor Joyce Tilsley. It's something that Caesar did as well when he was in Alexandria. He went to see the tomb of Alexander the Great.

So I think that Octavian is both emulating Caesar. He's also saying, I'm not related to the Ptolemus, because the Ptolemus are no good, but we'll go back to Alexander the Great and here's someone who's worthy of admiration. In handling the corpse, Octavian accidentally knocks off Alexander's nose. On arrival in Rome in August 29 BC, Octavian is granted a ticker tape parade, a triumph. It features an endless line of legionaries, captured slaves, exotic animals, and looted Egyptian booty. It had been meant to feature

Cleopatra herself, to be dragged in chains along the Via Sacra, before her public execution, a ritual garotting. A wax effigy has to suffice. Octavian is accompanied in his chariot by his nephew Marcellus and his steps on Tiberius, both are 13.

For despite his own relative youth, he is already cultivating his favourites, his successors, but he must tread cautiously. Despite his seeming omnipotence, he must still work with the old patrician class. Professor Neville Morley. He's really, really learnt the lesson of Caesar, that whether or not Caesar did want to become king, people thought he did. So the thing that Octavian constantly does is avoid any impression that he wants to be king. Dr David Gwynn. He is facing the problem that Julius Caesar faced in 45 BC.

You are now the sole person controlling a Roman world that particularly hates the idea of one person in control. Julius Caesar had never worked out what exactly you do next. For Octavian, he's never going to forget the Iads of March. He's never going to forget Caesar's murder. That's the consequence if you get this wrong. Not that Octavian is going soft. Now it is the turn of Anthony's sympathises to get a taste of cold steel. It's January the 13th, 27 BC.

We're in Rome's Senate, the Grand Marble Chamber. It's unchanged since that day, nearly 17 years. ago when Caesar was butchered. The benches are carved like a mini amphitheatre, orientated towards the huge gold seat, the tantam outthrown upon which the old Caesar, and now the new one, holds court. It's cold outside, a winter rain lashes.

It's hard to tell whether the shivering of the assembled is due to the weather or nerves. Octavian is back in his purple consular robes. the peaceable politician. But who knows what power he will choose to wield today. Dr. Lauren Ginsburg. The Senate is also trying to figure out how to continue to function like a Republican Senate when you have someone that supersedes you and everything you do. The accounts that we have show a careful dance,

where the Senate is not sure if they have to clear things with him in advance, how you will make his displeasure known. He was quite happy to come in and use terror, use a executions, use suppression of free speech in order to curb things that he did not like. When Octavian rises and makes his statement, there is an audible sigh of relief. What he is undertaking is an act of seeming benevolence. In pursuit of Antony and Cleopatra, the Senate had granted him emergency powers, and now he is formally returning them, all of them.

Julia Caesar died in part because he accepted a logically inconsistent title, which was dictator for life. And Octavian learns from this, get the power, leave the title. In his own autobiography, he records frequently that he was offered the office of dictator, and he always turned it down. And I think he wants us to think, oh, he's very magnanimous. But in fact, what he did was much more sinister because he was able to get all of the powers of the dictator and more to become a true autocrat. As a quid pro quo, the gushing, gullible Senate immediately appoints Octavian and Agripper, his great general, as consuls, the highest political posts. In the delicate mechanism of the Republic, with its checks and balances, the twin consuls sit for a term of only one year. But this is a mere detail to Octavian.

He will see to it that his own tenure is secured for the next ten. The fawning Senate has another gift it would like to bestow, and it comes by way of a title, or rather titles. Octavian by rank is to be known henceforth as preenkeps, meaning first or foremost, the origin of our word prince. The entire political system, in an extraordinary move, is redesignated accordingly. It will now be called the principate. If the Republic wasn't dead already, it is now. Romans, who had traditionally been almost obsessive in their opposition to any one man holding too much power, he persuades the Romans that essentially the best way of being governed is for one man to have

most of the power. And indeed what we see through his reign is quite often the people of Rome demanding that he should be given more, the mass of the Roman population actually welcome authoritarian rule. I think it's important to consider it sort of under the rubric of coerced consent. Romans had been waging civil war for five decades. So if you think five decades of armies coming into Rome, heads on pikes, Romans killing Romans, Rome was exhausted, Rome was terrified, generations of Romans had been mowed down. I think it's very easy to understand how training a little bit of freedom for what felt like a lot of safety seemed like a good idea. The flattery continues.

Octavian or Gaius Julius Caesar as he has taken to calling himself? How about a fresh start? A makeover, a relaunch. A body within the Senate proposes that Octavian be redubbed, Romulus, as in the father of Rome. as in Romulus and Remus, the orphans who, according to legend, had been suckled by a she-wolf. The idea of, let's give you the name Romulus because you are the second founder of Rome. You know, you are as important as the guy who began Rome in the first place. But they settle instead on an honorific, something meaning illustrious or revered.

And thus, Octavian becomes the first citizen of Rome, Caesar Augustus. He will record this moment later in the Ray's Guestai, his official autobiography. It's possibly the most famous sentence in the Ray Guestai. From this point onwards, I excelled everyone in Octoritas. So authority, really, it's moral authority. I am not ruling by power, protest us, I am dominating through my moral influence. The name Romulus had been dismissed for its monarchical associations. He was not just founder, but the first king of Rome.

The irony is that the family name, Caesar, will now become shorthand for any Roman leader, a king by any other name. High on the sycophancy, Octavian reciprocates with a classic piece of gesture politics. In Rome during wartime, the gates of the Temple of Janus are left open symbolically. It says something of Rome's turbulence that they've been rusting on their hinges for 200 years. For Octavian there must be an end to these forever wars, he says. And so amid great show, he orders the gates closed. They will remain shut throughout his reign. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. I'm Julie Andrews, and it is my great pleasure to return to Jane Austen Stories. This time I'll be reading another beloved classic Emma.

Join me as we step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. But as new visitors arrive and quiet mysteries unfold, what will our strong-willed heroine learn, both of the secrets of others and of her own heart's desires. Listen to Jane Austen's stories now wherever you get your podcasts. Two years after his return, Augustus goes on a goodwill tour of his new empire, Sicily, Greece, Syria, another visit to Egypt. One thing becomes clear to him. The empire's potential has not been fully harnessed.

Traditionally, overseas possessions have been dulled out as retirement gifts to old consuls, a virtue of gold watch. But dibbing up the territories has never ended well. From Pompey to Brutus to Mark Antony, power bases can be built. From now on, determines Augustus, the Roman Raj should come under one centralized authority, and that authority should reside in himself. That goes for the army too, whose legions have often been deployed as personal war machines by their generals. As ever, it's not a case of seizing power, but the Senate granting it to him.

And so the newly minted Caesar Augustus is accorded Mayas Imperium, simply and enigmatically greater power. He is now Rome's military commander or imperator. Also the origin of our word emperor. It also relates to the Latin term Imperium. We think of that as referring to empire, but the original idea of Imperium is the expectation of command. Imperium is what a Roman magistrate has, which means everyone should obey them.

Oh, and let's not forget that the original Julius Caesar has, at Octavian's behest, since been deified. The once humble Octavian could, should he choose, now sign himself Imperator Caesar Divifilius Augustus, Commander Caesar Augustus, son of the god, although he is ultra-careful about how he presents himself. He never took the title dictator, he never took the title emperor or king. Augustus knew the single most important lesson of trying to hold power, which is how you do something matters at least as much as what you do. Image is everything.

The upshot is that the fringe territory can now be consolidated. Galatia in today's central Turkey is incorporated in 25 BC. Judea, a client state under King Herod, will be fully annexed by 6 AD. Octavian, aka Augustus, also gets down to securing Rome's frontier in the Middle East, and he does so by way of a peace deal with the old enemy across the desert, the Parthians, of what is modern-day Persia, Iran. King Frate's the fourth is schmused, peace is secured, though Rome, with Armenia thrown in as a client state, spins it as a win. Probably the most famous single statue of Augustus, the Primer Porter Augustus,

which was Augustus, young, handsome, wearing his armour on the breastplate, is depicted the Parthians giving back the standards they'd taken when they beat Krasis, when they beat Anthony. It's very much framed as a great military victory. Actually, it was a diplomatic negotiation. But with this new Glasnost, Octavian can turn his attention to events far away in the West. That same year, 25 BC, Mauritania, today's. Morocco and Algeria is brought into the Roman fold. Though it is across the Med, the other side

of the pillars of Hercules, that the final piece of the puzzle falls into place. Hispania, Spain has been a tough nut to crack. With its rugged terrain and guerrilla fighters, it's proved impossible to conquer outright. Its north is impenetrable. But over 10 years from 29 BC onwards, Rome's armies make successive incursions against the Cantabian tribes, as ever agrippa is to the fore. By 19 BC, Spain will be subdued, the western limits of the Empire secured. With a taxation drive, a massive road building program is funded across the Empire's 3,000-mile reach. Through a system of horse relays and signal stations, a message can be passed between Rome and the most far-flung colonial outpost within days.

A feat that will not be surpassed until the age of the telegraph. The Spanish conquest also comes with a windfall. In its northwest, there are gold mines. While silver continues to be the base metal for everyday currency, the denari. A scarcer coin, the oreos, becomes Rome's new gold standard. And like all coins in circulation, it's stamped with the emperor's head. Roman coinage is legal tender throughout the empire, by the way.

It is a single market with fiscal union. When Julius Caesar had launched his own Spanish campaign, the then teenage Octavian had fallen ill en route. And it is there in the spring of 23 BC, while accompanying a gripper that Octavian is laid low yet again. Back in Rome, he's made comfortable. but the signs are not good. Aged 40 now, it seems touch and go.

The illness certainly crystallizes Octavian's thoughts. He must secure the line of succession. The new principut is not officially a system with a hereditary principle. It still masquerades behind the fig leaf of democratic accountability. But it is a given that Octavian's nominated successor will be rubber-stamped as the new Roman leader. And in a society that's been dominated by dynasties, it will be a case of keeping it in the family.

Octavian, of course, doesn't have a biological son. But that didn't stop Julius Caesar. A male relative can always be adopted. Do it by the book, with the Senate's blessing, and an heir can take over as the new preencaps. It's not so much family as a degree of continuity that what the principal does is try to ensure a reasonably orderly transfer of power

rather than one person dies and there is then chaos and civil war until one other person defeats his enemies and takes over. There are in the frame two young men. Those same ones who rode with Octavian at the Egyptian triumph nephew Marcellus and steps on Tiberius. Both are now 18. In the event of his death,

Octavian determines that a gripper will act as a regent, a mentor, until one of them emerges as the best candidate. From his sickbed, Octavian gives a gripper his signet ring. The blessing is conferred. Octavian pulls through, but the political grooming proceeds in

earnest nonetheless. It is Marcellus who moves into pole position. He is duly married off to Octavia's daughter, Julia. The sidelining of Tiberius will lead to a simmering resentment on the part of Octavian's wife, Livia. All along, she has been agitating for her eldest boy, and she has no intention of calling it quits. On July 1st, 23 BC, on Octavian's recovery, the Senate rewards him with yet another bobble. Tribune for life. It will give Octavian personal control over the Senate and the magistracy, in other words the law. The Senate has effectively signed over to Octavian every last vestige of its power. And if they could find anything more, stuffed down the back of the divan, they would surely hand that over to him too. He stops being consul. He almost never holds it,

because he can let other people be constant. While he stays in the background, keeps this image of being a preincipus. Don't look like an autocrat and you can rule the entire Roman Empire. At the end of that year, however, events take another twist. Out of the blue young Marcellus, the likely heir, dies. He's struck down with a fever never to recover. Signalling further mistrust in steps on Tiberius, Octavian summons a gripper back from soldiering in the east.

In a hasty bid to bind the general into his own family and produce a new air, Octavian offers him the hand of his newly widowed daughter, Julia. It seems an unsympathetic move. Julia is both grieving and still only 18 herself. Agrippa is 24 years her senior. But it does have a happy ending. The loved up agripper is. and Julia will go on to have five children, including two boys, Gaius and Lucius.

Octavian now has grandsons, further candidates for the imperial laurel leaves. Not all are content with the direction in which this is heading. Despite Octavian's purges, old Republican sympathies persist. In 21 BC, a pair of political malcontents named Capio and Morena launch an assassination plot. But the omnipotent Octavian is able to eliminate the conspirators. Rome has been engulfed by revolts and civil wars for the best part of two centuries. It has taken its toll on the capital. This is a city now of over one million people, the biggest metropolis in the known world,

and it has been neglected. Disease, crime and poverty are rife. Floods and fire are an everyday hazard. and getting anything done in Rome means crossing an official's palm at silver. Julius Caesar had been in the throes of urban renewal when he was assassinated. Octavian will take up the baton. He institutes both a police and a fire service, and also has a shake-up of local governance,

introducing a professional civil service. Secretly, he would like to impose martial authority in the city, but a military presence in Rome is strictly. outlawed, to which end Octavian undertakes a fudge. That assassination plot, he reasons, necessitates an armed bodyguard to be put at his disposal. The new security squad he establishes, the Praetorian Guard, will be there only to act as his personal minders. But the Praetorian's ranks will soon swell. And now the Emperor has armed military troops in their own city, forever that's protecting them.

And as a result, these troops end up being very, very close to the emperor. The head, the Praetorian prefect, we see being the right-hand man of many emperors that come later, often to the fall of that particular emperor. Under Augustus's military organization, the army is out on the frontiers. Only one military force is allowed in Italy. It's the 9,000 men of the Praetorian Guard, who, as almost anyone with a grasp on human nature can predict, are going to kill more emperors than any other single non-natural factor over the next 300 years, but not Augustus.

This September on the Noiser podcast network, on Jane Austen's stories, Dame Julie Andrews, continues to bring Austin's beloved classic Emma to life. On short history of, we're in medieval England for the fascinating story of the Peasants' Revolt, and 25 years on from 9-11, we're on the ground in New York City. On real survival stories, we're on a luscious winery. in northwest America and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night as the US is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel, A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and

ad-free on Noiser Plus. I'm Julie Andrews and it is my great pleasure to return to Jane Austen stories. This time I'll be reading another beloved classic Emma. Join me as we step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. But as new visitors arrive and quiet mysteries unfold, what will our strong-willed heroine learn, both of the secrets of others and of her own heart's desires? Listen to Jane Austen's story. Listen to Jane Austen's story. Now, wherever you get your podcasts. Back when he was a carefree teenager, Octavian had two best mates,

a gripper we've heard a lot about. But there was two Gaius Mycinas, five years younger. Mycenaus has stayed away from the limelight. He's refused a position in the Senate. A man of great inherited wealth, he was never motivated by power. He has, nonetheless, always been on the scene. flitting around the edges, acting as an advisor, an Octavian whisperer, a fixer in chief.

It was Mycenaus who had facilitated the launch of the second triumperate, and who had quietly minded the shop while Octavian was away at Actium. Well, Mycenaus is about to come into his own. He is to become Octavian's minister of culture, and he's going to refashion Rome in the emperor's image. Octavian, as is known, is big on presentation. He immediately shows himself to be very interested in controlling how all of his actions will be remembered. And he seems to have been canally aware that it would be very good for him to make a break from the actions that he did while atrium beer.

So we make sure that all records of his acts prior to Actium are burned. But I think even more interesting, and he records this in his own autobiography, is that he decides to have all of the standards statues of himself as a triumvir melted down. So he wants to erase all visual triggers for anyone walking around Rome of what he had been and replace them with a pious leader. Huge new buildings rise up, including the brand new forum of Augustus. There's a new temple of Mars and a massive triumphal arch. There's an imposing new mausoleum on the banks of the tiber.

There is the colonnaded walk, the porticus octavii, and the Grand Arapakis, the altar of peace, not to mention for those after a spa day, the baths of Agrippa. The aquavergo, by the way, the aqueduct which supplies the baths, is still in use today. It feeds into the trevi fountain. Part of Augustus' big claim to be putting Rome back together again is that he's restoring religion, he is making sure the neglected temples of the gods are no longer neglected, etc.

The fact that Augustus built his own mausoleum on the banks of the river Tiber, it's a really interesting building, but it was also, of course, a symbolic statement. And that, you know, he was going to be buried in Rome. Anthony would have been buried in Alexandria. Much of the building is designed by the architect Vitruvius, whose work will have an influence across not just the years, But coming centuries. I mean, Napoleon Bonaparte is one of the great examples of someone who essentially gets himself painted as a kind of Augustus-like figure who depicts himself as an emperor.

Well, it's Augustus, above all, who tells you what an emperor should look like and tells you what sorts of building you should have and so on and so far. Augustus is kind of the template for an emperor. Then there's his own physical representation, statues of himself everywhere. What we can say is that Octavian created a remarkably consistent image of himself that was ageless. He looked 25 for his entire reign. He looked like he was hitting the CrossFit gym for his entire reign. The image that he projected was one of eternal youth. And he wanted to show himself as sort of having this ageless quality that the whole empire could trust in his strength.

Nothing secures an emperor's legacy like having his glory celebrated in print. The Augustan period becomes a golden age of literature, with Mycenaus and Octavian championing the poets Horace, Ovid and Virgil, as well as the historian Livy. The most famous is of course Virgil, partly because he gets acclaimed as the greatest Roman poet, but also because I think that Virgil's work is, in a way, intertwined with politics, there's the great epic poem The Ineared, which is Rome's answer to Homer, and it's about the heroic foundation of Rome. So, you know, it fits very neatly into the notion

of Augustian Rome being the triumphant culmination arising from these original myths. Almost all dictators, kings, autocrats, want, people to glorify them. Alexander notoriously tried to get poets to write poems celebrating them, which is why we've got none of it, because it's terrible. Because very few dictators realize what Augustus realized. You find a poet of genius, you don't tell them what to write. You encourage them to write hopefully things that will praise you, but you don't try and dictate it.

Not all are on message. Ovid will fall foul of Octavian. and be exiled. Though all works will place second fiddle to another literary composition penned, or rather carved, during this period, one that we've already mentioned, the Reyes Gestei, Divi Augusti, the Deeds of the Divine Augustus. This autobiographical tract will be inscribed in full on the two bronze columns of his mausoleum, and will be copied throughout the empire for public consumption. And this is where Octavian Augustus's own account of his career begins. The Ray Gestai is the great funerary inscription, carved on Augustus's mausoleum and Roman bronze,

but Augustus wrote it years before he died. Very good forward planning. Including vignettes of his family's spiritual virtue, it is a foundational document, a prospectus for the dynasty, what will become known as the Julio-Claudian line. And yet, approaching the millennium, the question of the succession is thrown wide open again. In March 12 BC, Agrippa dies at his home in Campania. He was 51. He was taken ill after campaigning on the shores of the Black Sea.

Octavian is devastated. He goes into a month of mourning. It's not just the loss of a life-life. long friend, his rock. Agrippa was also a military maestro. He had just extended Roman control to the Crimean Peninsula. Whomever Octavian's successor might be, they must now be inducted without a gripper's guiding hand. Octavia's steps on Tiberius remains an unpopular choice as heir. He hates both politics and politicians, and the feeling is said to be mutual. There's the sense that he doesn't actually want the job. The best you can say is that his relationship with

his stepfather is strained, characterized possibly by childhood trauma. Back in the days of the purges, his own family by way of his father, had been on a list of prescriptions. And so Tiberius's earliest memories are of running through the countryside trying to escape with their lives. Libya clearly must have been a very understanding woman to end up marrying Augustus later after that. In the corridors of power, there are growing whispers about Livia, about the supposedly coincidental deaths that seemed to befall anyone who presents themselves as a rival to her darling boy. There are some already who believed that she had a hand in the mysterious demise of Marcellus. There are rumors of her proficiency with poisons. For the moment, regarding the

succession, it is the grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, to whom Octavian looks anyone but Tiberius. Tellingly, they are each given the title, Prinkeps Juventutis, Prince of Youth. Both are formally adopted as his sons. But in yet further murky circumstances, both Gaius and Lucius perish in quick succession, age 23 and 18. Again, illness is cited. And then they both die, AD2 and AD4. It could have been Libya, but frankly, the partnership between Livya and Augustus is too strong for too long. Sadly, people dying young doesn't usually require a conspiracy, but it's possible. Certainly at the time and still more today through Robert Gray's Eich Claudius novel,

we get the suggestion that these deaths are increasingly unlike. likely to be natural. I mean, it's the usual problem. Roman sources either have women as, you know, dutiful mothers who keep their mouths shut or as scheming witches. In the case of Livia, I mean, it's complicated. We've got no way of telling.

I think the fact that we see in our ancient sources again and again of the ambitious mother who kills everyone in the way of putting her son on the throne, the same happens with Agrippina and Nero, the same happens with any number of women that we could name, suggest that that's just what it is. that it's a stereotype. Octavian again casts around for an air, a spare.

Agrippa and Julia had had four children at the time of a gripper's death. Julia was pregnant with a fifth. Born three months later, this third son is dubbed, in honor of his father, Agrippa posthumous. He too is adopted. But Agrippa posthumus is a bit of a wayward youth, a drinker, a brawler, a womanizer. We'll never know about Agrippa posthumus, but he seems to be regarded as, you know, whether it's a psychotic or at the very least, he seems to be regarded as dangerous and must be kept away. He too disappears, or rather is disappeared, exiled to a remote rocky island under armed guard.

Planasia, today is pianosa near Elba. At one point it's said Octavian is even considering Tiberius' younger brother, Drususus. A war hero, a general, he is out of the agrippa mould. Needless to say, he doesn't last long either. In 9 BC, age 29, he's thrown from his horse, while campaigning against the German tribes. He will die from an infected leg wound. Although it's suggested that he had been recovering well,

until attended by his mother's personal physician, Duce's son, Germanicus, will later grow up to be a decorated. warrior himself. He too will die of a sudden and mysterious illness. Germanicus, incidentally, leaves a bereaved younger brother, armed with a limp, a stammer, and a whole bunch of nervous ticks. He's dismissed as a fool, not thought worthy of elimination. His name is Claudius. Germanicus also leaves behind a son, a harmless tyke nicknamed Little Boot. Caligula. One thing is sure. With all opposition removed from the equation, Tiberius is the last man standing. Julia, twice widowed already, and less than a year after a gripper's death, is married off yet again.

On June the 26th, 4 AD, Octavian swallows hard and makes a formal adoption of Livia's 45-year-old son. His name in full, Tiberius Claudius Nero. It is the inability to produce a male air, whether a genetic quirk or pure chance, that will continue to dog the Julio-Claudian lion. Of the twelve official sees us, only three will have a biological son. As part of his mission to rehabilitate Rome, Octavian lives a frugal life. At least that's how he likes to present it. He issues palatial living for a simple house. He eats modest meals.

And he has very strict views about public morality. Gambling is forbidden for a start. And in 18 BC, in a move that will shake wrong to its very foundations, he makes a criminal act of the city's greatest pastime, adultery. Yeah, you might be surprised that a man who steals another man's wife when she's six months pregnant would have some things to say about other women sexual behavior. But this is the first time that an elite woman having sex outside of marriage was a crime and a crime that would be tried in front of the Senate. And when I say women, men could be tried for adultery, but a husband having sex with someone

that was not his wife was not the crime. A husband having sex with someone else's wife or someone else's daughter was the crime. So it was essentially a property crime. Issues of infidelity now became a matter of public consciousness and public record. It was also made clear that a husband, if he caught his wife in the act, could kill her on the spot with impunity. But if he didn't want to kill her, he was required to press formal charges against her. And if he did not, anyone could do it for him. It's not even a subtle double standard. Augustus, as a married man, is not committing adultery by sleeping around, because under Roman law, that's fine. This is what I mean about an image.

There's no evidence Roman morality improved in the slightest. But it's part of what you do. It's part of building that image. It's all part of the drive to sanctify marriage and get the native Roman population breeding again to grow the expanding empire. Citizen men and citizen women were required to be married. If a woman was between 20 and 50, she was obligated to be married.

If a man was between 25 and 60, he was obligated to be married. If a woman's spouse died and she was a widow, she had one year to get herself another husband. And when there was an outcry that perhaps this was cruel, it got lavishly extended to two. And the way that he incentivized or disincentivized people following these laws was granting privileges to those that had a certain number of children and penalties to those that didn't. So it wasn't enough to just be married. you had to be in the business of making a lot of Roman babies. Mark Anthony had always regarded Octavian as a fraud, someone who had scorned Anthony's affair with Cleopatra

while sleeping his way through Roman high society. But Octavian has now painted himself into a corner. By presenting himself as a model of modesty, he can't be seen to waver. And it's going to cause him considerable torment when it comes to his daughter Julia. Julia, twice widowed and still mourning Agrippa, had been forced in 11 BC into marrying Tiberius, also now technically her stepbrother.

The marriage doesn't exactly thrill Tiberius either. He too was strong-armed into it, obliged to divorce Vipsenia Agrippina, the great love of his life. It is at this point it would seem that Julia now in her 30s decides to make up for lost time. Contemporary records aren't kind to Julia. She is portrayed as promiscuous, entertaining a succession of gentlemen callers, even, according to the philosopher Seneca, hanging around the forum and offering herself out as a prostitute. In the words of the Astorian, Valais, she left untried no disgraceful deed untainted with either extravagance or lust of which a woman could be guilty. Her father can only be shielded so much.

It's only a matter of time before Octavian finds out. And Livia, attuned to her son's growing humiliation, is not slow to amass evidence. When Octavian receives it, having set such store in his own moral rectitude, he is forced to practice what he preaches. So one of the greatest victims of Augustus' morality legislation is his own daughter, whose only child Julia. He, Augustus, make sure to try his own daughter for adultery in to BC. She's accused with a number of leading Romans, including Mark Antony's son, because she is an imperial woman, and as a result, because any children that would be born to her could be in line for succession, she's also charged with treason. At age 61, it's heartbreaking for Octavian.

By rights, Julius should be executed. Instead, she is another. sent into exile. This time to the tiny volcanic island of Pandateria. Home, centuries later, has Ventur Tene to Mussolini's infamous prison camp. Octavian will never see his beloved daughter again. Remitly knows if you live a long-distance lifestyle, you probably developed a few unexpected strengths, like instantly converting time zones. So when a text says, let's talk after dinner in Mumbai, You know they really mean during breakfast in Toronto or becoming the unofficial family tech support explaining why Tia Rosa in Mexico City can't hear you

when she's the one on mute. Can you hear me? Download the Remitly app today and keep your long-distance game strong. Remitly, trusted by millions to send billions worldwide. This September on the Noiser podcast network. On Jane Austen stories, Dame Julie Andrews continues to bring Austin's beloved classic Emma to life.

On short history of, we're in medieval England for the fascinating story of the Peasants' Revolt, and 25 years on from 9-11 were on the ground in New York City. On real survival stories, we're on a luscious winery in Northwest America, and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night as the US is threatened with nuclear disaster. And, in Sherlock Holmes short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel, A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and add free on Noiser Plus. Let's go back for a moment to Germanicus. He was named in tribute to his father Drusus,

who had led a number of successful expeditions against the Teutonic tribes. In doing so, he'd pushed way beyond the advances of Julius Caesar, whose own incursions across the Rhine had been only fleeting. Taking after his father, Germanicus leads fresh legiont into Germania. setting up the first Roman colony there, literally a colonia. Cologne. It's September 9 AD. We're in the Tudorburg Forest, a range of thickly wooded hills that runs northwest to southeast across today's Saxony.

For two years now, the Romans have been pushing deeper into barbarian territory. They have been land grabbing as far as the River Elber, edging towards what is present. present-day Poland. It's yielded a brand new province, Germania Antiqua. In Saxony, the legions are under the command of Quintilius Varus, another general for whom the word defeat holds no meaning. But the Germans are playing the long game. The Romans are being succored, roped lolled into a false sense of security. For the first time in over half a century, since the wars against the Parthians, Rome is about to find out what it means to be given a hammering. It is in sports terms a giant killing.

The shockwaves will reverberate throughout the empire. And the greatest indignity? The Germans seize three of the Legion's Eagles, the prized regimental totems, the company colors. Germanicus will later lead raids to seize two of them back. the damage has been done. The Battle of the Tudorburg Forest is not just a defeat, it's a humiliation. Rome's greatest military disaster. It forces a realization on the part of Octavian, that the empire, his empire, has reached its natural geographic frontiers. The English Channel to the north,

the Atlantic to the west, the Sahara to the south, and on the European continent to the east, the Rhine and Danube Rivers. The Battle of Tutankburg Forest did not end Rome's dreams of expansion, but it does seem to play an important role in Augustus' thinking that we'd gone so far. We're talking about a colossal empire. This is where the limits have to be drawn. It is still a vast dominion, one of 60 to 70 million people, 20% of the entire global population.

And for these people, he decrees. Within these frontiers, there will be no wars. I mean, this is a world, and especially the Roman world, that celebrates military glory. I mean, it's actually one of the most remarkable transformations that's happening in Rome under Augustus. The Roman Republic was a society that assumed warfare. The Republic exists for give or take 450 years. We're certain it's at peace on about three of them. It was always at war.

Military glory was how the senators marked themselves out. By the dying Augustus dies, senators now know you don't get military glory. The army is now a professional organization paid for by the state. The main role of the army is going to become defending the frontiers, not trying to push further beyond them. The period will become known to history as the period of Roman peace, the Pax Romana. Arguably what we see from Augustus, onwards is something that's almost a bit more like a Commonwealth, that the provinces are not

having to be controlled with military force. They become more integrated into the whole. But the major reason, single reason, the Roman Empire lasts so long is that the Romans did bring an improved standard of living, improved culture, the roads, the trade networks, across the region they ruled to the extent that over time almost the entire population of the empire call themselves Romans. They adopt it as part of their identity, with of course major implications for later Western culture. You don't impose language just by killing people. Latin became the base language because it was the universal language. A lot of politicians promised they'll bring a golden age.

Augustus actually did. It's not long after the German debacle that Octavian retires from public life. After Julia, the Tutaberg Forest is the killer blow. It's said that he locks himself away, going the full Howard Hughes, growing long hair and a beard, barely seeing daylight, or for that matter, a bathtub. He can be heard banging his head against the wall, wailing, quintilius Varus, give me back my legions. By the summer of 14 AD, Augustus is is growing increasingly unwell. With a sense of his own end, he asks to be carried south to the family estate at Nola.

It's there, with his intestinal complaint worsening, that he has his bedstead moved into the same room in which his father had died over 70 years earlier. According to Suetonius, Octavian has himself shaved, dressed and spruced up. He then summons his friends to his bedside. he asks them a question Have I played the comedy of life fitly?

If I have played my part well Clap your hands and dismiss me with applause from the stage Octavian dies on August the 19th 14 AD A month short of his 76th birthday So yes he gets to give his little sort of speech About whether he has played the comedy of life well Maybe he did, maybe he didn't But this is how it gets told.

And it's clearly important that the man who has lived this long, the man who has brought peace and stability back to the Roman Empire, gets the sort of peaceful death that he deserves. Augustus never wanted to die in pain. Swetonia says that he was very grateful to die at home in the bed where he was born. He has a final conversation with Livia. He has everyone that's around him. He gets really one of the best death.

of a Roman emperor because he seems to feel like he's leaving everything in a secure place. And then there is this designated successor, Tiberius, is ready to take over. In his last days, it is said, Octavian had eaten only figs, plucked from his back garden. It's also whispered that Livia, in the interests of a quick and painless death, had smeared every last one with the necessary poison. Or was it done to hasten the accession of Tiberius, and see off any last-minute pardon granted to a grip of Posthumus. For good measure, according to Svetonius, at Livia's command,

a centurion is dispatched to Postomus' remote island jail. He runs him through with a sword. The funeral of Octavian, the divine Augustus, is a massive state occasion. The streets of Rome are packed with mourners. The funeral pyre is built upon the field of Mars. As his body burns, a lone symbolic eagle is released into the sky. When Julius Caesar died, he had had a month renamed in his honor, July. For Octavian, the Roman calendar will be reconfigured again.

The Roman year begins in March. The month of Octavian's death, Sextilis, the sixth month, will be renamed August. And, like Caesar, he has also declared a god. If never officially a monarchy, succession will never go outside the family. The Giulio-Claudean line will provide Rome with Caesars for the next four generations. Octavian is certainly a tough act to follow. Tiberius, Caligula and Nero will prove to be not just disastrous as empress, but indulge in a sadism and depravity that is

off the scale. The bloodline redeemed only by the rule of the scholarly Claudius. I'd basically think Augustus set all of his successors up for failure, because the impossible job that he left them was that they had to be him, because he created this world in which empire was not just something Augustus did. Empire was Augustus. It was built around a cult of personality. But also I will say that none of his successors come close to his body count. Octavian, Augustus' legacy is debated to this day. the greatest Roman emperor of them all, the man who founded what we call today Western civilization,

or a bloody tyrant. The man who single-handedly ended the Roman Republic and slaughtered anyone who dead stand in his way. A self-aggrandizing father of the nation whose conquests, imperial symbolism, and manipulation of the democratic process laid the blueprint for every dictator ever since. You can attribute an awful lot of the legacy of Rome

to the fact that Augustus kept the Roman Empire on the rails gave its stability for centuries to come. He is also a model for an emperor, for the Romans, a model for what an emperor should look like for later would be emperates, the power, the display, the almost overwhelming feeling that you're being presented with a program of images telling you, Augustus is great, Augustus has brought back the golden age, or worship Augustus.

The legacy with Augustus, I think, is how quickly a long-standing governmental system can be dismantled by someone that has the will to do it. Whether we call that the dismantling of checks and balances, whether we call that the replacing of a republic with an empire, whether we call that dictatorship. I do sometimes wonder about the Battle of Actium and if Mark Anthony and Kirkpatter had won that, how different would life in the West have been really? I mean, how difference would our lives be today if that had happened? But I mean, you could speculate about all sorts of turning points in history, can you?

Augustus casts a phenomenal shadow because the empire he built is still largely intact 400 years later. And it's of course because the empire lasts that you get all of the world. this what has Rome done for us? This incredible legacy. He's a spin doctor. He's an image builder, but it's an image with substance, not just with fluff. You've got to strike a balance between being ruthless with being diplomatic. You've got to trust people to do their jobs around you. How many dictators rule for 45 years and die in their beds? As Octavian once put it, I found Rome a city of brick.

and I left it a city of marble. Thanks for listening to the Augustus story. Real dictators will be back soon, with the story of Raphael Trujillo. This September on the Noiser podcast network, on Jane Austen's stories, Dame Julie Andrews, continues to bring Austin's beloved classic Emma to life. On short history of, we're in medieval England

for the fascinating story of the Peasants' Revolt, and 25 years on from 9-11, were on the ground in New York City. On real survival stories, we're on a luscious winery in Northwest America and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night as the US is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel,

A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.