Rome’s Best Emperors: The History and Legacy of the Roman Empire’s Most Able Leaders

Summary

The importance of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (or as he was known from birth, Gaius Octavius “Octavian” Thurinus) to the course of Western history is hard to overstate. His life, his rise to power, his political, and his social and military achievements all laid the foundations for the creation of an empire which would endure for almost five centuries, and whose traditions, laws, architecture and art continue to influence much of Europe and the world today. Octavian was the first true Roman Emperor, and the first man since the Etruscan Tarquins five centuries earlier to establish a successful hereditary ruling dynasty in what had been a proud Republic for over half a millennium. He was a canny strategist, an excellent orator, a fine writer, a generous patron of the arts and enthusiastic promoter of public works, but above all he was a master politician. Octavian’s great-uncle (and adoptive father) Julius Caesar was a great general, and his rival Mark Antony was a great soldier, but as a politician Octavian outmatched them all. He still stands in bronze on Rome’s Via dei Fori Imperiali to this day, along with the likes of Caesar, Hadrian, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, and he is forever immortalized in all Western calendars as the patron of the month of August, which was dedicated to him when he was deified, following his death, as Divus Augustus. 

“The Five Good Emperors,” a reference to the five emperors who ruled the Roman Empire between 96 and 180 CE (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius), was a term first coined by Machiavelli and later adopted and popularized by historian Edward Gibbon, who said that under these men, the Roman Empire “was governed by absolute power under the guidance of wisdom and virtue.” This period of 84 years is generally regarded as the high point of the Roman Empire, at least after Augustus.