AUGUSTUS, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus Augustus). - Son of Gaius Octavius and of Atia (daughter of Julia, the younger sister of Julius Caesar), born on 23 September 63 B.C. (691 of Rome), he was adopted and educated by his great-uncle G. Caesar. While he was devoting himself to the study of eloquence at Apollonia, in Greece, he learned of the tragic death of his great-uncle (44 B.C.) and hurried to Rome to claim his inheritance and punish the assassins.
Having defeated Antony in 43 B.C., he formed with him and with Lepidus the second triumvirate, to sanction which the contracting parties sacrificed to one another their relatives and their best friends. The triumvirs defeated the republicans commanded by Brutus and Cassius at Philippi (42). In 40 Octavian, by the treaty of Brundisium, became master of the West; in 36 he defeated Sextus Pompey and left Lepidus only the office of pontifex maximus, an office which he assumed after the death of Lepidus. With the victory of Actium over Antony (2 September 31 B.C.) he remained practically master of the entire State. To preserve the forms, he had himself successively granted the most important public offices, and in 27 B.C. he obtained the title of "Augustus" (in Greek Σεβαστός) together with that of prefect of morals and consul for life. He attended to the material and cultural prosperity of the empire, securing peace and favoring letters and the arts. He married successively Clodia, Scribonia and Livia. He died at Nola in 14 of the common era (767 of Rome) on the 19th of the month sextilis, which in his honor was called augustus (August).
Lk. 2:1-2, as he prepares to describe the birth of the Savior, relates: "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole inhabited (world) should be enrolled. This first enrollment took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria." Since in profane sources no explicit trace has been found of a universal census ordered by A., some critics (with E. Schürer) have called into doubt the truthfulness of Luke (v. QUIRINUS). But there is no lack of indications that confirm the Gospel. Tacitus (Ann., I, 2) informs us that after the death of A. there was read in the senate a Breviarium imperii compiled by the emperor's own hand "in which were indicated all the public revenues, the number of (Roman) citizens and of allies under arms, the conditions of the fleet, of the kingdoms (subject or allied), of the provinces, of the taxes, of the tributes, of the needs and of the largesses." To have this information A. must necessarily have ordered censuses and statistics throughout the empire. In the monument of Ancyra (Ankara), which contains his Res gestae, A. states that he completed three times the census of Roman citizens (in the years 28 and 8 B.C. and in 14 A.D.).
Even before this period A. intervened in the affairs of Palestine and especially in those that concerned Herod. After the victory of Actium (31 B.C.) A. had granted pardon to Herod, who had sided with Antony and now strove, with idolatrous flatteries, to make the powerful Roman forget his political fault: he multiplied his homage by naming cities and erecting temples to the divine A. (v. HEROD THE GREAT). Without letting himself be blinded by flatteries, A. treated Herod with benevolence, granted him autonomy in the administration of justice and finance, exemption from tributes toward the empire and from the obligation to quarter Roman troops and garrisons; he granted him his own army composed for the most part of mercenaries (Syrians, Thracians, Germans, Gauls), but he demanded absolute dependence in political, military and dynastic questions; practically he considered him as a trustee ad nutum. When Herod in 8 B.C., without the permission of Rome, used his army for a punitive expedition against the Nabateans who favored the raiding Bedouins, A., indignant, wrote to him that from then on he would consider him no longer as a friend, but as a subject (Flavius Josephus, Ant. Iud., XVI, 290). On the death of Herod (4 B.C.) A. partially validated his will, denying to Archelaus the title of king of Judea (with Idumea and Samaria) and granting him only that of ethnarch. He accepted instead the dispositions of the deceased for the other surviving sons, assigning to Antipas the tetrarchy of Galilee and Perea, to Philip that of Batanea and Trachonitis (Lk. 3:1). A. intervened again in the affairs of Palestine by deposing Archelaus (6 A.D.) and entrusting Judea to Roman procurators.
Bibliography14 works
AUGUSTUS IN THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION
For the pilgrim who came to Rome from the provinces of the collapsed empire or from the lands of the ancient barbarians, the imposing ruins of the monuments scattered over the seven hills recalled the name of A., linked more or less legitimately to this or that place in the city. It will suffice to run through the description that, between the 12th and 13th centuries, the Englishman Master Gregory left of Rome for his countrymen (ed. R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della città di Roma, III, Rome 1946, pp. 137-67), which records the palace, the arch and the pyramid of A. Better known, more authoritative and older is the systematic description of the Mirabilia urbis Romae, earlier than the middle of the 12th century. Besides the arch and the palace, the mausoleum of A. is recalled there. The memory of the emperor, in the said description, is evoked further by the church of S. Maria in Aracoeli, where the emperor is said to have had the vision of the Sibyl; by the church of S. Maria in Trastevere, where the miraculous fountain of oil is said to have gushed forth; by the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, where the feast of 1 August is said to have come to replace and continue that which for four centuries Rome had celebrated there in honor of A. and of his victory over Antony (ed. R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, op. cit., pp. 3-65).
The Mirabilia, from the 12th to the 15th century, enjoyed very great diffusion throughout the West, but it is not chiefly to them that the merit is due of having kept alive the memory of the first emperor in the Middle Ages.
A. had been the founder of the empire which, after Charlemagne and Otto I, would become a living reality again. Although it differed profoundly from the ancient one, it presented itself as its legitimate continuation, and the emperors of the Middle Ages styled themselves Caesars and Augusti, thus referring back to their distant predecessors from whom they claimed to derive their rights and powers, and they invoked especially the name of A.
Historians, in tracing their way back from their own times to the origins of the empire and of the world - it will suffice to recall the universal chronicles - gave A. a pre-eminent place. And, noting the power, wealth, happiness and prosperity of his reign, never since equaled, they had induced the belief that the age of A. had been a kind of golden age, which was gladly evoked in comparison with and as relief from present miseries. Such an opinion was favored by men of letters and poets, interested in creating in contemporary sovereigns some feeling of emulation for the generosity of A., who had protected Virgil and Horace. Thus Anselm of Besate promises Henry III to sing his deeds, if he will receive from him the protection that A. granted to Virgil (cf. E. Dümmler, Anselm der Peripotetiker, Halle 1872, p. 16).
The strongest reason that in the Middle Ages served to keep alive among Christian peoples the memory of A. was the fact that under his reign Jesus Christ had been born. No one could believe that God, in becoming man, had chosen without profound reason that time in which, once the unity of the world had been achieved and peace established, a prince had gathered in himself all the powers of the ruling city and had founded the empire for the centuries. On the contrary, all believed that God had given that prince a great and decisive mission, namely to offer to the redemptive work of the Savior a unified and pacified world. The idea of this mission, albeit unconsciously Christian, of A. is already clearly expressed at the beginning of the 5th century, in the Historiae adversus paganos (VI, 1), of Paul Orosius. Toward the end of the 6th century, in the Chronicle of a Byzantine writer of Syrian origin, John Malalas, there is found the famous legend of the Capitoline vision which attests A.'s awareness of the birth of Christ (ed. L. Dindorf, Bonn 1831, pp. 231-32). Malalas had drawn the notice from the now lost work of a somewhat earlier chronicler, Timothy. The legend was handed down for a long time among the Christians of the East; in the 8th century it also had a Latin translation at Rome (cod. Vat. Pal. 277, fol. 63), and, in the 12th century, a new edition, which appeared in the Mirabilia urbis Romae. This legend is connected with the origins of the church of S. Maria in Aracoeli, which are, very probably, dated to the 6th century.
While the Eastern version of the legend reaffirmed a concept common to the Christians of the 6th century, that with the birth of Jesus Christ the false oracles fell silent, that is, it affirmed the victory of Christianity over paganism, the Western version returned to the thought of Orosius, that Christ had been born under A., when the whole world was at peace, and added that A. had not wished that he continue to be called lord of men, because among men the Lord of the world had been born. - See Pl. XXIX.
