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Every Day Life in Ancient Rome was More Scandalous than Historians Let On

Khalid Elhassan July 8, 2022 38 min

sir lawrence alma tadema the meeting of antony and cleopatra

5. Underestimating This Teenager Turned Out to Be a Huge Mistake

Bust of Octavius, and a reconstruction of how he would have look. Royalty Now

Everybody in the Roman political scene underestimated Octavius. They took him for a lightweight teenager whose only asset was the famous Caesar name. However, the unprepossessing young man – he was frail and prone to illness throughout his life – was a master politician, and played a long game. The future emperor paid for public games in honor of Julius Caesar, his adoptive father. He sought to gain recognition and popularity, and to lead Rome’s populist faction, fittingly known as the populares. Octavius also set out to woo Caesar’s veteran soldiers to his side.

Roman gold aureus depicting Mark Antony, left, and Octavius, right, struck in 41 BC to celebrate their power-sharing agreement. Coin Talk

He succeeded beyond anybody’s expectations. With a military force at Octavius’ command, Cicero’s faction sought his aid. They bent the rules to appoint him a senator despite his being legally below the minimum age, and sent him against Mark Antony, who was forced to retreat from Italy to Gaul. The consuls in official command of the forces arrayed against Mark Antony were exterminated. Octavius got the Senate to appoint him to a vacant consulship, once again despite the fact that he was legally too young for the position.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.