So far we have seen Augustus build a succession of heirs, only to be disappointed by repeated deaths.

His moves in the succession combine four principles, NO MORE WAR, GIRLS ARE MUMS, DADS ARE BEST, AUGUSTUS LOVES LIVIA.

Here is a summary of Augustus’ attempts to provide a succession of strong male heirs.

Augustus lacks a son.  He decides his nephew Marcellus (son of his sister, grandson of his biological father, Gaius Octavius) will make a suitable father for the children of his daughter Julia 1.  This simple plan fails due to Marcellus’ death.

Next he adopts his grandsons, Lucius and Gaius, Julia’s children by another husband.  They die.

Then accepts his unrelated stepson Tiberius, as a father of heirs.  When Tiberius’ marriage to Julia fails, and it is clear that she will have no more sons (in fact she gets banished), Augustus is forced to consider Tiberius as an heir and adopts him.  Augustus really wants a biological heir and so also adopts Julia’s third son by her previous husband, but later rejects him as unsuitable to be an heir.  He has now run out of Julia’s sons, but there are still daughters.

Faced with the prospect of seeing his succession pass out of his biological line to Tiberius, Augustus brings in his great nephew, Tiberius’ nephew, Germanicus, who has descent from Augustus’ sister Octavia.    Germanicus is to marry one of Julia’s daughters and keep the succession in Augustus’ biological family.  Tiberius and his son lack biological relatedness to Augustus.  Tiberius’ son is placed after Germanicus in the succession and given a suitable marriage which will produce children descended from Augustus’ father, but not Augustus himself.

The rest is just swapping off.  Here are the Julio-Claudians who ruled.

In 14 AD Augustus died.  Tiberius succeeded, as planned.  During his reign he killed off several of Augustus’ descendants, including his own ex-wife, Julia 1, Agrippina, wife of Germanicus, and her two elder sons.  Germanicus himself died of disease or poison in 19 BC.  When Tiberius finally died in 37 AD, he had kept the peace for quarter of a century, although the imperial court had become a dangerous place.  His son had predeceased him, possibly murdered by his wife, and Tiberius, now embittered and absorbed in his own world of vice and paranoia, allowed his line to die out.

Since Tiberius’ son was dead,  a son of Germanicus followed him, as Augustus had intended.  A survivor of the massacre of his family, the Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar, known as Caligula was reputedly mad.  His bloody reign ended with his assassination in 41 AD.  The line of Germanicus’ sons was exhausted, although daughters remained. Caligula left no heir.

The next Emperor was Claudius, brother of Germanicus, a descendant of Augustus’ father.  He had never been intended as an heir – he was lame and Augustus viewed him as half-witted.  Tiberius never saw him as a rival, and Caligula made him a figure of fun.  Now, in the confusion of the assassination, he became Emperor.  Claudius already had a son and a daughter.  But in 49 AD Claudius married into Augustus’ bloodline, cementing his claims on the Augustan succession.  This involved incest –  he chose his niece, Caligula’s sister, Germanicus’ daughter, great granddaughter of Augustus himself, and, like Claudius, descended separately from Augustus’ sister .  Names in the imperial household were departing from tradition and becoming very confusing.  So we will call her Agrippina 2, to distinguish her from Agrippina 1, wife of Germanicus.

When the marriage took place, Agrippina 2 already had a son, Nero, by a previous marriage who had a double claim to Augustan descent, both from Augustus and from his sister.  Claudius was only descended from Augustus’ sister.  As a result of Augustus’ back-up heir plans, there were a number of people around with some sort of relatedness to him and his father.

Agrippina 2 was a dangerous bride.  She had survived the killings of both parents and  two brothers, and she had also steered her way through her brother Caligula’s murderous court.  The story is that Claudius could not see through his young wife’s ambition for her own son.  When Claudius’ son died young, it was said he had been poisoned by his stepmother.  Left without an heir, Claudius adopted Agrippina’s son Nero and made him his heir.  As you might expect by now, Nero also married Claudius’ daughter, his stepsister and first cousin once removed.  Their son would be Claudius’ grandson (and his great nephew) and descended in multiple ways from Augustus and his sister.  When Claudius died in 54 BC, allegedly poisoned by his wife, Nero became Emperor.

However, once he became Emperor, Nero’s concern for the Augustan succession was minimal.  There was no grandson for Claudius.  After Nero had established his rule, he murdered his mother and had his wife put to death.  He made two other legal marriages as well as two irregular marriages, but had no children who survived infancy.  In 68 AD his military commanders rebelled and he committed suicide.  Civil War followed and the Augustan succession was over.  Augustus had prevented Civil War for nearly 100 years.  But his concerns for promoting his biological line in the succession had made the imperial family a brutal and murderous place.  The traditional morality which Augustus promoted in his legislation was nowhere more flouted than in the distorted relationships, scandals and cruelties which typified his own family.

So in AD 4 Tiberius, son of Livia, stepson of Augustus, was adopted into the Julius family and had only Augustus’ unsatisfactory grandson, Postumus, between him and the prospect of ruling Rome.  AUGUSTUS LOVES LIVIA.  But Augustus didn’t love Tiberius that much and he had not finished with the DADS ARE BEST principle.  He soon rejected Postumus and was left with the prospect of Tiberius taking over, and founding his own dynasty, with no biological connection to Augustus at all.  Yet there were still options among his biological family through his sister’s daughters.

Essentially, Augustus had a good stepson/bad stepson problem, at least, from his own point of view.  Livia’s younger son, Drusus, was the good stepson.  He had never known any father except Augustus – and many people believed he was Augustus’ son, conceived while Livia was still married to her previous husband.  He was a great military commander in his own right, and earned the title Germanicus for his family in battle.  And he had married a daughter of Augustus’ sister Octavia in 16 BC.

In 16 BC this had made sense.  Julia 1 (GIRLS ARE MUMS) and Agrippa were producing numerous children, including the boys, Gaius and Lucius.  Tiberius had been betrothed to Vipsania, Agrippa’s daughter by a previous marriage, almost since she was born – a political match which had nothing to do with the succession.   They married in 19 BC and were happy.  Meanwhile, as a back-up plan for the succession, Augustus decided Drusus could be a father of his own father’s descendants (DADS ARE BEST) and married him to his niece, the daughter of his sister Octavia in 16 BC.  While this fulfilled the AUGUSTUS LOVES LIVIA principle, Augustus didn’t expect to need either of Livia’s sons in the succession.

All this changed with Agrippa’s death in 12 BC, Tiberius’ disastrous marriage to Augustus’ daughter, Julia 1,  and her disgrace and exile.  Augustus had to give up on having a biological grandson in the line of succession.    But Drusus’ successful marriage had produced a potential heir, descended through women from Augustus’ biological father  Gaius Octavius .  This new arrival was  – well, he is always called Germanicus.

If Drusus had lived, Tiberius would almost certainly have missed out on the succession in AD 4.  He and Augustus had had a terrible relationship since the marriage to Julia in 11 BC.  Drusus could have been adopted as a strong successor and caretaker for his own son, Germanicus.  But Drusus died in 9 BC, reputedly of falling off a horse – another example of the dangers of campaign.   Left without Drusus, Augustus briefly considered making Germanicus his heir, but at barely twenty, he was too young to take over, especially against the opposition of his now wicked uncle, Tiberius.

But the future was with Germanicus.  Let’s not forget Julia 1’s daughters (GIRLS ARE MUMS).  By now, Augustus had given up on marrying Tiberius to anybody.  But Julia’s daughters were still available for marriages and their children would be great grandchildren to Augustus himself.   He was set on Germanicus, already a great nephew via Octavia, marrying one of Julia’s daughters and fathering his great grandchildren.   So Augustus came up with a complicated plan.

In AD 4 Augustus forced Tiberius to adopt Germanicus, his nephew and to make him his heir above his own son.  Augustus finished the plan by marrying Germanicus to one of Julia’s daughters, Agrippina.  Now everything would unfold as if Drusus had lived, with Tiberius filling in until Drusus’ son took over.

Augustus was following the four principles.

Germanicus (DADS ARE BEST) was descended from Augustus’ father, Gaius Octavius, through Octavius’ daughter Octavia, and her daughter Antonia (GIRLS ARE MUMS).  So he was descended both from Livia on the one side (AUGUSTUS LOVES LIVIA)  and Augustus’ father on the other.  By the marriage to Agrippina, Augustus’ granddaughter, Germanicus’ children could be descended from Augustus himself.  So Germanicus’ children would be Augustus’ descendants, Gaius Octavius’ descendants, and also Livia’s descendants in a mixed Julio-Claudian succession.  As a promising young commander, Germanicus would soon be able to ensure the NO MORE WAR principle for himself.  And meanwhile Tiberius would be  get to rule for life, but he would not get to found a dynasty.  All this might have made sense on paper, but it took no account of psychology.

What about Tiberius’ son?  Well, like Tiberius, Tiberius’ son wasn’t biologically connected with Augustus at all.  He had a place in the succession too – Tiberius was allowed to adopt him as a Julian and junior heir after Germanicus.  And a marriage was made between Tiberius’ son and Germanicus’ sister.  This gave Augustus another chance to bring his father’s line into the succession even if Germanicus died without heirs.  After Tiberius would come his son (unrelated to Augustus) and then his son (descended from Augustus’ father).   But Germanicus and his line came first.

Tiberius came off worst in these arrangements.  having been forced to divorce his son’s mother to marry Julia 1, he now found his son virtually disinherited.  He had to treat his nephew, Germanicus, as senior in his household to his own son – a humiliating position.  And he became a wicked uncle to Germanicus, knowing that his own son could only succeed if Germanicus’ line failed.   When Augustus made these arrangements,  he was signing a death warrant for his granddaughter Agrippina and two of her sons, who would be wiped out, along with other potential rivals, in the reign of Tiberius.  Germanicus himself would die of poisoning on campaign in 19 AD.  But Germanicus would eventually contribute two Emperors to the succession – his son Caligula and grandson Nero.

We are now ready for the final post; Part 9 – Swapping Off.

In AD 4 Augustus was faced with the death of both his heirs, the sons of Julia 1, and the lack of a credible regent.  He revised his position.

Julia still had one son left -her youngest, Postumus Agrippa.  So Augustus adopted this boy, whom he had previously ignored.  The sources suggest there was some deep-seated objection to Postumus,  possibly because he had some sort of disability or mental illness.  Postumus did not remain an heir for long – he was banished in AD 6.

But Augustus also made a much more interesting move.  While focusing his hopes on Gaius and Lucius, Augustus had kept on devising  back-up plans involving brutal political marriages and divorces.  Let’s go back in time.  When Agrippa died in 12 BC, Julia 1 was still young enough to become the mother of even more heirs.  Augustus hoped not to need them – he had Gaius and Lucius, her sons.  But on the GIRLS ARE MUMS principle Augustus felt Julia should continue to ensure his succession with back-up sons, and picked another suitable husband.

So in 11 BC, Julia married her stepbrother, Livia’s elder son, Tiberius.  He was indeed strong enough to enforce the NO MORE WAR principle, but his choice over other candidates was obviously to please Livia.  AUGUSTUS LOVES LIVIA.   To make this marriage,  Tiberius was made to divorce his beloved wife, the mother of his son, and marry Julia against his will.  The marriage with Julia was a disaster and produced no children.  Julia’s career as mother of heirs was over.  By 6 BC, Julia and Tiberius had separated and in 2 BC she was disgraced and sent into exile.  Augustus would have to make the best of her children by Agrippa.   At the time, with Gaius and Lucius shaping up excellently, this didn’t seem much of a problem.

But in AD 4, the situation was much more urgent.  Augustus did something much more radical than just trying out the unsuitable Postumus as an heir – he adopted his stepson, Julia’s ex-husband, Livia’s elder son Tiberius, bringing the Claudius family into the succession.  Like Agrippa, Tiberius was no biological relation, but an experienced commander and able to uphold the NO MORE WAR principle.   This helps explain how he got chosen to marry Julia.  But that doesn’t explain his adoption in his own right, after it was clear that he would not father Julia’s sons – for that we need the fourth principle; AUGUSTUS LOVES LIVIA.  Augustus was elevating Livia’s son to a position where he might inherit the rule of Rome – something he had not done for either of Julia’s previous husbands.  In fact (spoilers), on Augustus’ death in 14 AD, Tiberius became the Emperor Tiberius.

However, Augustus did not let go of the idea of keeping his own biological family in the line of succession.  Initially, he kept his grandson Postumus in reserve; given the age difference, it is probable that he considered placing him next in the succession after Tiberius, so that Tiberius would hold power in his life, but pass it back to a descendant of Augustus at death.  Even after he finally gave up on Postumus, Augustus would continue to interfere with the line of succession, diverting it away from Tiberius’ natural heirs towards his own biological family.

The death of Marcellus ruined Augustus’ first hopes.  But he caused Julia 1 to remarry by 21 BC.  She was 18, her new husband some 25 years older.  The new husband had to divorce his wife, another cousin of Julia’s, to marry her.  In fact the ex-wife was the sister of Julia’s dead husband.  Augustus’ family was becoming extremely complicated.  But it all seemed worthwhile to him because Julia had to be the mother of heirs and she had to have a hand-picked husband.

The husband picked in this case was Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus’ second-in-command who had won the crucial Battle of Actium for him in 31 BC, causing the flight and suicide of Augustus’ rival Mark Antony and his consort Cleopatra.  The choice of Agrippa seems to have been purely practical – Augustus needed a regent who could take over and protect his heirs if he died.  On the NO MORE WAR principle, Agrippa was the obvious person to take over, and he would champion the rights of Julia’s children if they were also his own.

Augustus had not abandoned the idea of bringing his own father’s descendants back into the line of succession.  He was arranging other marriages among his kin which we will come back to later.  Augustus did not adopt Agrippa.  His focus was on Julia’s children and their marriages.

Julia and Agrippa had a number of children, many of them doomed to be martyrs to the Augustan succession.   The marriage produced three sons.   Gaius Vipsanius Agrippa (b. 20 BC) and Lucius Vipsanius Agrippa (b. 17 BC) were the first two.  Augustus stretched the law in order to adopt them both in 17 BC; he removed them from their parents, and brought them up in his own household.  As the boys were adopted, they officially took new Julian names.  You will find them listed as Lucius Caesar and Gaius Caesar.  He showered titles and privileges on them and sent them out into theatres of war as soon as they were old enough to get experience.

This coin was recently sold by vcoins.com for $21,000.  It is solid gold – nearly 8 grams.  This was a prestigious coin, celebrating the stability of the succession.  The younger boy put on the adult toga in 2 BC, and died in 2 AD, so scholars think the coin must have been minted in the interval when both were alive and officially adult.  On the obverse is Augustus, with his titles – SON OF THE GOD, FATHER OF THE FATHERLAND, CAESAR AUGUSTUS.  On the reverse, CLCAESARES – GAIUS AND LUCIUS CAESARS.  Above this legend stand the heirs, wearing the toga and displaying shields and spears.  The odd objects floating between them are religious implements.  The message is clear – the youths are ready to take over from Augustus in civil, military and religious life.  Around them are their own titles; SONS OF AUGUSTUS, CONSULS DESIGNATE, LEADERS OF YOUTH.

The coin told one story, reality another, but there was no reason why most people handling the coin should know the true situation.  Augustus presented an image of direct father son succession, cleverly constructed by adoption.  The title ‘leader of youth’ was invented especially for the Senate to bestow on Gaius (5 BC) and Lucius (2 BC), along with ceremonial silver shields and spears, pictured on the coin.  In the days when consuls had been elected from the Senate, a consul designate would usually be a senior general in his forties.  Now, under Augustus, the role was ceremonial.  Gaius was designated as consul in 6 BC aged 14, before he even put on his adult toga.  The next year he put on the toga, was appointed to the elite religious role of pontifex, and was made leader of youth and given a ceremonial military command.  Lucius followed in his footsteps as he reached the same ages.  Gaius held his consulship in AD 1, aged barely twenty.  There was no substance behind the images.

Augustus also married Gaius to his 12 year old cousin Livilla in 1 BC.  She complied with the four principles by being descended through women from Augustus’ sister (DADS ARE BEST, GIRLS ARE MUMS), and by being the daughter of Livia’s younger son (AUGUSTUS LOVES LIVIA).   But she was very young to begin producing heirs and Augustus probably felt there was no urgency.  He focused on rapid military training for Gaius and Lucius instead (NO MORE CIVIL WAR).  By 4 AD they were both dead in foreign lands – Lucius in Marseilles and Gaius in Lycia (Turkey).   Hostile writers suggest that Livia poisoned them, but their deaths are probably more an illustration of the deadliness of the exposure to disease and accidents which was an inevitable part of campaigning.

Amid state mourning in 4 AD, Augustus had to make a new plan.

Augustus was confronted with the possibility that he would not father the strong male heir he needed under the NO MORE WAR principle.  Employing the GIRLS ARE MUMS and DADS ARE BEST principles where did he go next?

Look at the picture while you think it over.

Julius Caesar, Augustus’ adoptive father,  left no children, especially after Augustus allegedly killed Caesarion, his son by Cleopatra, in 30 BC.

Augustus biological father, Gaius Octavius had one other child, Augustus’ sister, Octavia.

Octavia had a number of children, but the only boy was Marcus Claudius Marcellus, officially a member of the Claudius family, but Augustus’ nephew and the only grandson of Augustus’ dead biological father.

(The noble family of the Claudii was huge.  Marcellus was not closely related to Livia’s sons.)

Yes, like his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, Augustus looked for an heir descended from his own father.  But which father? Augustus did nothing to further the biological line of Julius Caesar.  The father Augustus looked to was his biological father, Gaius Octavius.

So Augustus’ predictable first move (DADS ARE BEST) was a cousin marriage, bringing Marcellus into the succession by (GIRLS ARE MUMS)  marrying his daughter Julia 1 to him in 25 BC.  Now, when and if Julia had a son,  Augustus’ grandson, the boy would be  Augustus’ own father’s great grandson twice over, on both his mother’s and father’s sides; for Augustus, this was the next best thing to having a son of his own.  Augustus didn’t adopt Marcellus because he hoped there was plenty of time for the grandson to turn up in.  There wasn’t.  Marcellus  died childless in 23 BC.

Augustus (Octavian, as he was called until 27 BC) made three marriages.

He made his first marriage was made to cement the uneasy alliance he entered with Mark Antony after Caesar’s death in 44 BC.  The bride was Antony’s step-daughter.  Divorce was rapid, and helped cause a small war.

By the time of his next marriage, 40 BC, Augustus was seeking the alliance of Sextus Pompey, the son of Pompey the Great, who had gained control of Sicily.   The bride was Scribonia, a relation of Sextus’ wife.  She was 17 years older than Octavian and had to divorce in order to marry him.  The alliance with Sextus was short-lived.  The marriage ended in 39 BC; Sextus was defeated and killed in 35 BC.

The marriage to Scribonia produced one daughter Julia; we have to call her Julia 1 because there are other Julias in this story.   Julia 1 was born on the day of her parents’ divorce because Augustus was preparing to marry the love of his life, Livia Drusilla.  Under Roman law, the father took custody, and Julia was brought up by her stepmother.  It turned out that Julia 1 was the only legitimate child Augustus would ever father, making her crucial to his plans.

Livia and Augustus married in January 38 BC.  The marriage was extremely unlikely; Livia’s father and husband had sided with the killers of Caesar against Antony and the young Augustus.  Her father had committed suicide after losing to Augustus in the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC.  Livia was still married to her husband and pregnant with his second child when she and Augustus made a love match.  A divorce was arranged and the marriage took place while she was still pregnant by her ex-husband – a scandal even by Roman standards.

Livia’s ex-husband waived his right to keep their sons; Livia brought them up in Augustus’ household.  The two boys were named Tiberius Claudius Nero and Decimus Claudius Drusus   We will call them Tiberius and Drusus 1.  They were not adopted as children and remained officially members of the Claudius family.  Augustus did not adopt them.

In 27 BC the Senate granted Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus the title Augustus.  By this time he had assembled the model Roman family – a strong father (himself), a dutiful wife (Livia), two sons and a lovely daughter.  He used his own family as the model for a campaign for a return to traditional moral values.  But in fact the tensions and divisions which would cause major problems in the succession were already in place.  Augustus had no male heir – and he did not intend to make his stepsons his heirs, although Livia, their mother had ambitions for them.  Julia’s relationship with her stepmother was unhappy, and her value as a mother of heirs in the line of succession destined her for a disastrous future, which begins in Part 5.

Roman’s had a strong sense of heredity.  They respected their noble ancestors and, in fact, worshipped them.  The images of the family’s dead patriarchs were carried at every aristocratic family funeral and displayed the rest of the time in the atrium,  the great reception hall of the family home.  The faces of the dead ancestors reminded visitors that they were visiting the representative of the genius or spirit of one of the great noble houses – a man whose ancestors held consulships, led great armies and changed history.

The oldest living ancestor of any branch of a family was called its paterfamilias, the father of the family.    In prehistory he had the powers of an Old Testament Patriarch, and his sons literally lived in his household.  This had all gone; noble Romans maintained their own households, even if the father or grandfather were still living.  But the paterfamilias still wielded enormous authority, and still theoretically had power of life and death over his children – a father actually killed a treasonous son in the year of Augustus’ birth.

So in planning his succession a Roman was looking to carry on the great line of his ancestors as much as, or even more than, his own private bloodline.  If he could not provide himself with a son, choosing an heir descended from his father or grandfather would honour their memory, maintain the bloodline of the ancestors and help transmit the family genius.

We can see this in operation in the case of Augustus himself.  He called himself the son of Julius Caesar – as he was, by adoption.  Caesar never had a legitimate son, and his daughter predeceased him.  He had a son, Caesarion, by the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, but he had no intention of making him his heir at Rome.  Instead, in his will, he adopted his sister’s grandson.  This followed the two principles GIRLS ARE MUMS and DADS ARE BEST; because he could not carry on his father’s line himself, he carried it through his sister.

In 44 BC Julius Caesar was assassinated.  The young man he adopted, Gaius Octavius, immediately changed his name to Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus – the correct way to show he was now a Julius adopted from the Octavius family.  In 27 BC this young man was granted the title Augustus, which he used for the rest of his life.

What about the children of Caesar’s only daughter Julia?  He had made a political match for  her; she married Pompey the Great  who adored her, but she died young in 54 BC leaving no children.  After her death, Caesar and Pompey fought each other in Caesar’s Civil War (49-45 BC), which ended with Pompey’s defeat and death.  Had Julia lived and had a son, maybe things would have been different.

Yes, girls cannot be strong male heirs.  In fact they even need a male guardian to manage their business affairs and represent them at law.  Marriage and motherhood is their destiny.

But as wives and mothers, girls have the capacity to glue aristocratic families together.  Suppose you are an ambitious Julius and you want to make overtures to the Sempronius family.  The ultimate networking move is to marry a Sempronia, a girl imaginatively named after her family, and preferably one with a well-connected father.  These unions didn’t necessarily last very long – the Romans believed in political divorce as well as political marriage.  But the potential of the match went beyond the public relations coup of the wedding.  If the marriage lasted, the children born into it would be of mixed Sempronius/Julius descent, they would have Julian and Sempronian grandfathers, and these patriarchs would unite for important events.  Frequent intermarriage between the same families created important political bonds.

So girls could cement aristocratic families together, providing offspring with ancestry on both sides, creating shared dynasties.  But that’s not all.

Romans were not impeded by Salic Law and Tail Male and all those things which in later Europe meant that property and status missed out girls and their descendants.  Status in the Roman family passed in patriarchal manner from father to son, and in default of sons to brothers and so on.  But property went by the will of the testator.  And men without sons had a special Roman resource – adoption.

In Britain, adoption is of children, and, historically, adopted children could not enter the line of succession.  So even a man as powerful as Henry VIII could not adopt a son, and ran through  6 wives and invented his own Church trying to get himself a strong male succession.  Romans adopted adults.  A man without a son could adopt a suitable young man to take his name.  The adopted son was regarded as equivalent to a son by birth – he took on the family identity and its ancestors became his ancestors.

So where does the girl come in?  Well suppose you have a daughter but not a son.  When you adopt, your daughter marries the new son – this is legal.  Now your grandson will be your biological heir, even if your ‘son’ isn’t.  Perfect.

And what about deciding whom to adopt?  Networking is a factor here.  But you could also consider your own relatives on the female side – your sister’s sons for example.  That way, your new ‘son’ will be biologically close to you, and importantly, descended from your own noble father.  This brings us to Part 3 – Dads are Best

For harassed teachers, and desperate students everywhere.

I found myself once again coming to grips with the Augustan succession while working online with my lovely students at Dreaming Spires home learning.   The question isn’t just who comes after the Emperor Augustus, but why he keeps choosing and losing heirs, how he chooses them, and how he loses them.  In Part 1 we will start up with who Augustus was, and how he set about finding an heir.  I will start telling you my FOUR KEY PRINCIPLES, which I think explain all his moves.  I made these up myself but they do work.

Augustus is often called the first Emperor of Rome, but he himself claimed he had restored the Republic and that all his powers came from the Senate.  He was princeps – the leader of the Senate.  He was awarded the honorary title Augustus.  Other than that, he claimed, he just held powers granted to him by the Senate and people, just as leading Romans always had.  But, in reality, he was awarded numerous special powers, which made him effectively sole ruler.  And he was determined that after he had gone, a new strong male leader would take his place.  Why?

PRINCIPLE I

THERE MUST BE NO MORE CIVIL WAR.  Augustus was quite keen on war in general, but there must be no more wars in Italy (or anywhere else) where Romans fought Romans.  The century before Augustus came to power in 31 BC Italy had been ravaged again and again by Civil Wars and collapses of legitimate government.  There had been the Social Wars the Spartacus Rebellion and two other Slave Wars,  the Catilinarian Conspiracy, Caesar’s Civil War, between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, the murder of Julius Caesar and the Liberators’ Civil War against his killers, the Perusine War, and finally Antony’s Civil  War between the young Augustus and his former ally Mark Antony,  who was backed by Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt.  Augustus had been involved in last three of these and had also crushed the Sicilian Revolt led by Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompey the Great, who had found himself left over after Caesar’s Civil War and seized Sicily.

Augustus really thought Italy had had enough Civil Wars.  So how should he set about choosing a strong male heir who could take over at need and keep the peace?

When Augustus returned to Rome, after beating Mark Antony and Cleopatra at sea in the Battle of Actium, and then in Egypt in the Battle of Alexandria, he had a secret weapon.  This was his new friend Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the strategist who had masterminded his victory over Sextus Pompeius in Sicily.  In fact, it was Agrippa who had really been in command at Actium.  Agrippa supported Augustus in his efforts to control and pacify the Roman empire, and in his programme of great buildings in Rome itself and elsewhere.

Agrippa was about the same age as Augustus, but Augustus was only in his thirties.  If Augustus died suddenly, Agrippa would probably take over, but his job would be to support and advise the heir.  Agrippa himself was never appointed heir?  Why?

This takes us to PRINCIPLE 2 and Post 2.