Octavian Influence On Julius Caesar

The Roman Empire, everybody knows about it. It lasted for hundreds of years and spanned across continents. But how was it made? The Roman Empire is generally accepted to be the creation of a man named Octavian. Octavian was the heir to the Roman Republic after Julius Caesar was assassinated. The Roman Republic was just coming out of a civil war and was falling to pieces. So Octavian decided he would put thing into his own hands to make things better. This is a quote from Octavian himself talking about the republic. “In my sixth and seventh consulships [28-27 BC], after I had extinguished civil wars, and at a time when with universal consent I was in complete control of affairs, I transferred the republic from my power to the dominion of the senate and the people of Rome…After this time I excelled all in influence [auctoritas], although I possessed no more official power [potestas] than others who were my colleagues in the several magistracies.” ( Before Octavian became had complete control of Rome, he had to gain control of over the senate. After returning from Actium Octavian controlled most of the Roman military. He decided that resigning would do no good for Rome, so he decided to slowly gain power. He was given Consecutive consulships Octavian took the position of Princeps. A

Another thing that played a key role in his success was the fact that senators had no real way of opposing him. The senators had no military power, Augustus having it all to himself. That leads to the question of how did Augustus manage the entire might of the Roman army? The first thing that he did was reduce the number of soldiers from 500,000 to 300,000. This allowed him to root out legionaries who might betray him, as well as have fewer troops likely to cause a