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The Top Benevolent and Malevolent Dictators From History

Khalid Elhassan November 30, 2020 32 min

Augustus - Ancient Rome — 'The Emperor Augustus Rebukes Cornelius Cinna for His Treachery', by Etienne Jean Delecluze, 1814 - Augustus pardoned Cinna and gave him a government job. Van Go Yourself

5. The Dictatorship of Augustus Ushered in the Most Prosperous Stretch of Roman History

The Roman Empire ushered in by Augustus as dictator in fact but not in name, replaced the Roman Republic. It was a stable, autocratic, and centralized de-facto monarchy, whose founding kicked off a period known as the Pax Romana. It brought the Greco-Roman world two centuries of peace, stability, and prosperity.

Augustus held power in the Roman world from 43 BC, first in conjunction with Mark Antony until 31 BC, and thereafter alone, until his death in 14 AD. As he lay dying, Augustus compared the role he had played as emperor to that of an actor on a stage. His last words to those gathered around his deathbed were: “Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit“.

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.