Augustus

Williams aims to show the human reality of the big moments we know from the primary and ancient secondary sources - the build up to Labienus’ suicide (which he moves in time for dramatic effect), the final transformation of the moribund republic into a principate, the reasons for Ovid’s relegation and for Julia’s exile. The cold, calculating, efficient Octavian is made human and relatable: a young man of great potential and talent given a dangerous start to life during a time of civic upheaval, at first merely reactive, trying to preserve his life from powerful and established enemies, in time ambitiously aiming to subdue the chaos and re-establish order in Rome.

Ovid’s fate and his feelings about it are well-known from the historical record, even if we don’t know the specific grounds for Augustus’ actions. But Julia’s character, deeply interesting as Williams has made her, is elaborated, as is her being swept up into a cult in the islands of Greece that Augustus finds immoral.

I wanted more of a portrait of what the daily life of a man in such power is like, and even more, what made him that. However much time we spend in his 18-20 year old company I still feel I don’t understand what made him. And then we skim over the next thirty years with but brief landings until the episode before Julia’s exile. One touch I buy is that the death of Maecenas, the last of Augustus’ childhood friends, takes the wind quite out of his sails.

I also loved a paragraph about the New Young, contrasting the younger generation that takes the new stability for granted while complaining about the moralizing stodginess of the generation that created that stability: a generation that thought of itself as revolutionary. Something about the self-absorbed crankiness reminded me of a piece I just read in the Guardian about modern cohorts and the mutual despite between millennials in ankle socks and mom-jeans and crew socks and baggy jeans on zoomers.

It is a beautiful book, that treats the people at the center of matters of great import with great sympathy, that acknowledges faults and limitations and mocks gently at foibles, and turns cold white marble portrait busts into warm personal portraits.