18. Augustus Shuffled Off the Mortal Coil With Cool Last Words
Gaius Octavius (63 BC – 14 AD), better known as the emperor Augustus, began his rise to power at age 19, following the assassination of his uncle and adoptive father Julius Caesar in 44 BC. A shrewd political operator, the teenager played the competing Roman factions against each other, steadily accumulating power in the process. Within two years, he was running the Roman Republic along with Mark Antony and a third wheel named Lepidus (who was soon eased out of power), and had defeated Caesar’s assassins. By 31 BC, he emerged as Rome’s sole ruler, after defeating Antony and Cleopatra.
Octavius then set about reorganizing the state. He ended the Roman Republic, whose political structure, created for a city state, had proved impractical for the governance of a vast empire and resulted in a century of chaos and bloodshed. In its place, Octavius, whom the Roman Senate granted the honorific “Augustus”, created the Roman Empire: a stable and centralized de-facto monarchy. That began a period known as the Pax Romana, which brought to the Greco-Roman world two centuries of peace, stability, and prosperity. As he lay on his deathbed in 14 AD, Augustus compared the role he had played as emperor to that of an actor in a theater. His last words were: “Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit“.
