The Roman Empire at Its Height

On January 16, 27 BCE, a thin, frequently ill man of thirty-five stood before the Roman Senate and performed one of history's most consequential acts of political theater. He announced that he was giving up his extraordinary powers. The Republic was restored. The crisis was over. He was just a citizen again.

The Senate, as he surely expected, refused. They begged him to stay. They showered him with honors. They gave him a new name: Gaius Octavius, later Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, and finally Augustus (63 BCE - 14 CE). Rome's first emperor, who transformed the Republic into a monarchy while maintaining the fiction that republican institutions still governed. His 41-year reign established the template for imperial rule and inaugurated the Pax Romana., "the revered one." And so the Roman Republic died — not with a tyrant seizing power at sword-point, but with a politician pretending he did not want it.

Augustus had learned from his adoptive father's mistake. Julius Caesar had flaunted his authority, accepted a dictator's title, let people put his face on coins while he was still alive. The Senate murdered him for it. Augustus understood that Romans would accept a king so long as no one called him that. He took the title princeps, "first citizen." He controlled the army, the treasury, and foreign policy. But he kept the Senate, the magistrates, the elections. The forms of the Republic survived. The substance was gone.