Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Acta Ludorum Saecularium (CIL VI 32323). The inscribed contemporary record of the Secular Games, recovered in 1890 from the banks of the Tiber.
• Cassius Dio. Roman History, Book 54. The narrative spine for 23 to 17 BCE, including the moral legislation and the equestrian reaction in the Forum.
• Donatus. Life of Virgil. The Octavia scene and the account of Virgil's death and the deathbed request to destroy the Aeneid.
• Horace. Carmen Saeculare. The Secular Hymn, performed June 3, 17 BCE. Note the prayer for marriage and childbirth that directly references the Lex Julia.
• Horace. Odes, Book 4. The retrospective on the Parthian settlement.
• Macrobius. Saturnalia, Book 2. The Julia anecdotes, preserved from earlier sources.
• Propertius. Elegies, Book 3. Contemporary elegy on Marcellus.
• Res Gestae Divi Augusti, sections 6, 8, 14, 19–21, 29. Augustus's own account of the laws, the building programme, and the family arrangements.
• Seneca the Younger. Ad Marciam de Consolatione. The fullest ancient account of Octavia's grief.
• Suetonius. Life of Augustus, chapters 21, 29–30, 34, 63–64. The moral legislation (chapter 34), the literary circle, and the family arrangements.
• Tacitus. Annals, Books 1 and 3. Retrospective on the succession and on the moral legislation. The analysis of the Julian laws in Book 3, chapters 25–28, is the sharpest ancient critique of the legislation.
• Virgil. Aeneid, Book 6, lines 860–886. The Marcellus passage, in the descent to the underworld.

Secondary Sources

• Fantham, Elaine. Julia Augusti: The Emperor's Daughter. Routledge, 2006.
• Galinsky, Karl. Augustan Culture. Princeton University Press, 1996. Essential on the moral legislation and its relationship to the literary programme.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2014.
• McGinn, Thomas. Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome. Oxford University Press, 1998. On the Lex Julia de Adulteriis and its enforcement.
• Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1939.
• Treggiari, Susan. Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian. Oxford University Press, 1991. The standard reference on Roman marriage law and the Augustan legislation.

Sources and Historiography

This episode has been drafted primarily from Suetonius's Life of Augustus. Suetonius was writing in the early second century CE, a century after Augustus's death, with access to the imperial archives as Hadrian's private secretary. Almost all the physical description, the working habits, the superstitions, and the details of the household come from his Life. In the cases where they do not come from Suetonius, they are usually in Cassius Dio, writing another century later still from Greek-speaking Bithynia in Asia Minor—modern northwestern Turkey.

Both sources have limitations. Suetonius is thematic, rather than chronological. He groups anecdotes by category—ancestry, physique, virtues, vices, notable sayings, superstitions, death—rather than narrating events in order. This makes his Life of Augustus a strange reading experience for a modern biographer, because it is not really a biography, in our sense. It is a character portrait assembled from archival material and organised by theme. It is also, in places, organised to illustrate a moral conclusion Suetonius has already reached. When he reports that Augustus was moderate in his diet and modest in his household, he is not only telling us what the archive says. He is also telling us what a good emperor ought to look like, and holding Augustus up as the example.

Dio is more chronological, but further from the events and working, for this period, from sources he does not name. His account of the 23 BCE illness is the fullest we have. It is not necessarily the most accurate, because the details of a sickroom scene reach him across two centuries, and what he records may already have been shaped by the political uses to which the story was put.

What neither of them can see is the ordinary population of the empire. Augustan Rome had roughly a million inhabitants. The Italian peninsula had perhaps six million. The empire, from Spain to the Euphrates, held fifty or sixty million. Almost nothing in Suetonius or Dio is about any of them. The empire that Augustus administered through his correspondence did not, in the sources, contain the people it was administering. Tacitus's famous analytical verdict, quoted last episode, that the principate was built on grain for the people, bonuses for the army, and the sweetness of peace for everyone else, is, among other things, the rare ancient moment when one of the senatorial historians looks outside the senatorial chamber and names who the settlement was actually for. It was for the soldiers who got their pay, for the urban poor who got their grain, and for the propertied classes who got safety. The people it was paid for by were the provinces, which Augustus governed, but the sources do not describe.

That absence is the largest thing about the Augustan period that the literary tradition does not tell us. The archaeology is doing some of that work now. The inscriptions, the papyri from Egypt, the provincial census records—these are being used by modern scholars to recover the empire that Augustus built for other people to live in. In this episode, I have followed the literary sources because the character portrait is what they are best at, and because the question of who Augustus was as a person is the question the sources were actually trying to answer.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Cassius Dio. Roman History, Books 52–53. The fullest narrative of the settlement years and the 23 BCE illness.
• Donatus. Life of Virgil. For the literary patronage relationships.
• Horace. Odes, Books 1–3. Published in 23 BCE, the same year as the illness.
• Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Augustus's own account, read as the official version.
• Suetonius. Life of Augustus. The indispensable source for character, physical detail, working habits, and household.

Secondary Sources

• Eck, Werner. The Age of Augustus. Blackwell, 2003. Short, rigorous, excellent on the mechanisms of the settlement.
• Galinsky, Karl. Augustan Culture. Princeton University Press, 1996. The standard modern account of the cultural programme and its poets.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2014. The best modern biography, particularly strong on the administrative improvisation of the early settlement.
• Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1939. The foundational modern analysis, still essential after eighty-five years.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Augustus. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (“The Deeds of the Divine Augustus”). Augustus's own first-person summary of his career and achievements, inscribed on bronze tablets and posted throughout the empire. The religious restoration is mostly in chapters 8, 10, 12, 13, 20, and 21—the temple restorations, the Janus closures, the Ara Pacis, the assumption of the Pontifex Maximus. Loeb Classical Library edition (with English translation).
• Cicero. De Divinatione (45 BCE). The Roman intellectual position on augury and divination, written by a sitting augur. Book One defends divination; Book Two demolishes it. Loeb Classical Library edition.
• Cicero. De Natura Deorum (45 BCE). The fullest ancient account of educated Roman thinking about the gods. Three speakers representing the Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic positions. Loeb Classical Library edition.
• Livy. History of Rome. Numa and his religious institutions are in Book 1. The first lectisternium is in Book 5. The Cybele arrival in 204 BCE is in Book 29. The Bacchanalian crisis of 186 BCE is in Book 39—the longest single ancient narrative of a Roman religious panic. Penguin Classics translation by Aubrey de Sélincourt for the early books; Loeb editions cover the rest.
• Lucretius. De Rerum Natura (mid-first century BCE). The major surviving Epicurean text, and one of the greatest works of Latin verse. Lucretius's systematic argument that the gods are real but irrelevant, that the soul dissolves at death, and that religion is the source of most human misery. Penguin Classics translation by Ronald Melville.
• Ovid. Fasti (early first century CE). The Roman religious calendar in verse—six surviving books, one for each month from January to June. The single best ancient source for the festivals and rituals that punctuated the Roman year, including the Cybele/Claudia Quinta episode in Book 4. Penguin Classics translation by A.J. Boyle and R.D. Woodard.
• Plutarch. Parallel Lives. The Life of Numa is the major ancient narrative of Rome's religious founder. The Lives of Caesar, Cicero, and Antony provide most of what we know about the religious dimensions of the late Republic—Caesar's election as Pontifex Maximus, Cicero's augural service, the propaganda war of the 30s. Penguin Classics translations available for all the relevant Lives.
• Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus (186 BCE). The surviving bronze decree, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. One of the oldest surviving Latin prose documents and the contemporary record of the Bacchic suppression that Livy 39 narrates. The Latin text is in CIL I² 581 with translations widely available online.
• Suetonius. Divus Augustus. Augustus's biography. Chapters 30 and 31 specifically address the religious restoration programme, including the eighty-two temples and the management of the priestly colleges. Penguin Classics translation by Robert Graves.
• Virgil. Aeneid. The founding epic of Augustan Rome, and the most sophisticated single statement of the Augustan religious-political programme. Aeneas's pietas as the organizing virtue of the poem, the burning of Troy and the rescue of the household gods in Book 2, the descent and the parade of future Romans in Book 6. Robert Fagles translation (Penguin Classics) is the standard modern English version.

Secondary Sources

• Beard, Mary, John North, and Simon Price. Religions of Rome. Cambridge University Press, 1998. Two volumes. The standard modern scholarly treatment, and the work this episode draws on most heavily.
• Rüpke, Jörg. Religion of the Romans. Polity, 2007. A clear, sociologically-minded treatment of Roman religion as a system of social practice rather than belief. Particularly good on the institutional and political dimensions.
• Scheid, John. An Introduction to Roman Religion. Indiana University Press, 2003. The best short modern treatment for the general reader.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Cassius Dio. Roman History, Books 50–51. The fullest ancient narrative of Actium; read with awareness of the Augustan shadow.
• Horace. Odes 1.37 (the Cleopatra ode). The most complex poetic response to the battle and its aftermath.
• Plutarch. Life of Antony, chapters 60–86. The essential account of the final years, Actium, and the deaths.
• Suetonius. Life of Augustus. Essential for Augustus's own account of his constitutional arrangements and the Eutychus anecdote.
• Tacitus. Annals, Book 1 opening. The indispensable counter-reading; the most compressed and precise analysis of what the principate actually was.
• Virgil. Aeneid, Book 8. The shield of Aeneas; the Augustan ideological framework at its most artistically powerful.

Secondary Sources

• Carter, John. The Battle of Actium. Hamish Hamilton, 1970. The most focused scholarly treatment of the battle itself and the strategic question of what the plan actually was.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2014. The best modern biography; presents the principate as improvised rather than planned, which is probably closer to the truth.
• Roller, Duane. Cleopatra: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 2010. The most scholarly modern treatment; essential on the question of the asp versus prepared poison.
• Schiff, Stacy. Cleopatra: A Life. Little, Brown, 2010. The most readable modern account; particularly strong on Cleopatra's death and the sources' disagreements about it.
• Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1939. The foundational modern analysis of how Augustus built his power; still indispensable after eighty years.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Appian. Civil Wars, Books 4–5 (c. 150 CE). The fullest surviving narrative of the period 49–31 BCE. Essential for the Sextus Pompey campaign, the confrontation with Lepidus at Messana (5.122–126), and the political narrative of the Triumvirate. Drew on sources now lost, probably including Asinius Pollio.
• Cassius Dio. Roman History, Books 48–51 (c. 230 CE). Continuous narrative from Philippi to Actium and the Augustan settlement. More systematic than Plutarch but less vivid; Octavian-favorable. Important for the Donations of Alexandria and the reading of Antony's will.
• Plutarch. Life of Antony (c. 100 CE). The essential biographical source. Plutarch drew on Asinius Pollio, who knew Antony personally; Dellius, who served on the Parthian campaign and wrote a memoir of it; and Antony's own memoir of the same campaign. Key passages: chapters 24–31 (Tarsus and Alexandria); 32–42 (the Triumvirate, Perusine War, Brundisium, Misenum); 50–54 (Octavia, Ventidius and Gindarus); 55–71 (the Parthian campaign); 72–75 (Donations of Alexandria).
• Velleius Paterculus. History of Rome, Book 2 (c. 30 CE). Near-contemporary, written under Tiberius. Hostile to Antony and admiring of Octavian, but his chronology is sometimes more reliable than later sources. His brief account of the Lepidus confrontation (2.80) confirms the main outlines of Appian's narrative.

Secondary Sources

• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Antony and Cleopatra. Yale University Press, 2010. The most thorough recent character treatment of both figures.
• Huzar, Eleanor. Mark Antony: A Biography. University of Minnesota Press, 1978. The standard scholarly biography.
• Roller, Duane. Cleopatra: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 2010. Essential for the Egyptian and Ptolemaic context, and particularly good on the nine-language question.
• Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1939. The foundational modern work on the period. Syme's argument that the Augustan propaganda apparatus has continued to shape how we understand this period is the frame for this episode.

Sources and Historiography

The source situation for this period is both rich and layered, and the layers matter.

Appian wrote his Civil Wars, which is the primary systematic narrative for this episode, in the mid-second century CE, roughly a hundred and fifty years after the events. His account is built from earlier sources, most of which are now lost, and it carries the usual cautions about temporal distance: the specific details of crowd scenes at the funeral, the precise reconstruction of the Philippi fighting, the individual anecdotes of proscription are not contemporary reports. They are reconstructions. Appian's account of the proscriptions is the fullest we have and contains detail with the texture of earlier documentation. His battle accounts for Philippi are detailed and broadly credible, though casualty figures should be treated with appropriate scepticism.

Plutarch is our most important biographical source, and his three relevant Lives here are the Life of Antony, the Life of Brutus, and chapters forty-four through forty-eight of the Life of Cicero. Episode 51 of this series engaged extensively with the Life of Brutus. The Life of Antony is the source for the funeral oration and for Antony's character, and it is one of Plutarch's most vivid works precisely because Antony is one of his most vivid subjects. Plutarch's purpose throughout is moral biography rather than institutional history, and he will sacrifice chronological precision for a scene that illuminates character. When Plutarch tells us that Antony covered Brutus's body with his finest cloak, we are reading either exact reportage from a source now lost, or a story that was told because it captured something true about both men. The distinction matters to the historian. For the listener it may matter less: the story is true in the sense that it describes correctly the difference between Antony and Octavian, and Plutarch is very precise about that difference throughout.

Cicero's own writing is a category apart. The Philippics are primary sources for the political crisis of 44 to 43 BCE in the way that no secondary account can be: speeches written by a participant, intended to change the outcome of events, composed under genuine personal risk. The Letters to Atticus and the Letters to Brutus from this period are real-time documentation of a brilliant man trying to navigate a situation he understood better than almost anyone and could not control. They are also, inevitably, documents shaped by the pressures of the moment. Cicero was not always right. He was not always honest even with his closest friend. He consistently overestimated the Senate's capacity to act decisively and consistently underestimated Octavian's willingness to act ruthlessly. Reading the letters alongside the events is one of the most illuminating exercises in ancient political psychology available to us.

The major modern scholarly debate runs between Ronald Syme and the scholars who have complicated his reading. Syme's The Roman Revolution, published in 1939, treats Octavian as a cold revolutionary who understood from the beginning what he was building and pursued it with complete strategic discipline, using the language of Republican restoration as deliberate camouflage. Karl Galinsky, in Augustus: Introduction to the Life of an Emperor and in earlier work, argues for a more contingent picture: an extraordinarily gifted politician making things up as he went, responding to crises as they arose, arriving at the principate by sustained improvisation rather than predetermined design. The debate has not been resolved and probably cannot be. The young man who arrived in Rome in April 44 BCE and the emperor who reorganised the Roman world in 27 BCE may have been the same person with the same intentions from the beginning, or the second may have been made by the first's experience of the intervening years. The evidence supports both readings. What it does not support is the view that he was ever, at any point, simply riding events rather than shaping them.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Appian. Civil Wars, Books 3 and 4. The most systematic narrative of this period. Appian wrote in the mid-second century CE, drawing on earlier sources now mostly lost. His account of the proscriptions is the fullest surviving description and carries the texture of earlier documentary sources. His Philippi narrative is detailed and broadly reliable, though specific figures should be treated cautiously.
• Cicero. Letters to Atticus, Books 14 to 16, and Letters to Brutus. The most urgent primary source for the political crisis. The tollendum letter, in which Cicero uses the ambiguous word about Octavian, is in Book 11 of the Letters to Atticus and is worth reading against Octavian's later account of it.
• Cicero. Philippics. The final political act. All fourteen are significant, but the second Philippic is the most sustained attack on Antony, and the fourteenth, his last public speech delivered in April 43 BCE, has a quality of exhausted determination that is unlike anything else in the corpus.
• Plutarch. Life of Antony. Essential for Antony's character and role from Caesar's murder through the Triumvirate. The funeral oration account is the most vivid surviving description of that scene. The Life should be read alongside the Life of Brutus, which was covered in detail in Episode 51, for the full picture of the Philippi campaign from both sides.
• Plutarch. Life of Brutus, chapters 36 to 53. Covers Philippi and the death of Brutus. The earlier sections of this Life were the primary source for Episode 51 of this series. Readers should consult that episode for the full character portrait before reading this one.
• Plutarch. Life of Cicero, chapters 44 to 48. The death of Cicero. Among the most powerful passages in all of Plutarch. Should be read alongside Cicero's own final letters to see the same events from inside and outside simultaneously.

Secondary Sources

• Galinsky, Karl. Augustus: Introduction to the Life of an Emperor. 2012. The essential counterweight to Syme: a contingent, improvisational Octavian, no less brilliant but built by experience rather than designed in advance.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. 2014. The most comprehensive modern biography for this period from Octavian's perspective. Strong on the Mutina campaign and the mechanics of the Triumviral period.
• Holland, Tom. Rubicon. 2003. The most readable popular account of the whole late Republic; essential context for everything in this episode.
• Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. 1939. Still essential, still contested. Syme's Octavian is a cold revolutionary with a plan.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Appian. Civil Wars, Book 2. The systematic political account; useful for the sequence of events in the dictatorship period and the aftermath.
• Cassius Dio. Roman History, Books 43–44. The most detailed account of the political sequence in 45–44 BCE; useful for the tribune incidents and the accumulation of honours.
• Cicero. Letters to Atticus, Books 14–15. Real-time reaction to the assassination; Cicero's initial exhilaration and its rapid deflation as he realises the conspirators have no plan. The “courage of men, strategy of children” formulation is from these letters.
• Nicolaus of Damascus. Life of Augustus. A near-contemporary account with some unique material on the Ides.
• Plutarch. “Life of Antony.” For the Lupercalia scene; Plutarch's account of Antony's role is the most detailed.
• Plutarch. “Life of Brutus,” chapters 1–20. The formation of the conspiracy from Brutus's perspective; essential for the recruitment of Brutus and Cassius's role.
• Plutarch. “Life of Caesar,” chapters 57–69. The dictatorship, the Lupercalia, the conspiracy, and the killing. The Ides scene is here in full.
• Suetonius. “Life of Julius Caesar.” Essential for the dictatorship period, the reforms, the personal details, and the conspiracy. The satirical Senate notice and the epilepsy detail are both from Suetonius.

Secondary Sources

• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Caesar: Life of a Colossus. 2006. The most comprehensive modern biography; pragmatic and military-focused.
• Holland, Tom. Rubicon. 2003. The most readable popular account of the whole period; the Ides chapter is particularly strong.
• Meier, Christian. Caesar. Translated 1995. The most analytically ambitious treatment; Caesar as improviser rather than planner.
• Parenti, Michael. The Assassination of Julius Caesar. 2003. A provocative class-based reading that corrects some of the hagiography around the conspirators.
• Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. 1939. Caesar as revolutionary monarch; the indispensable framework even where one disagrees.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Appian. Civil Wars, Book 2. The systematic political narrative; useful for the civil war period and the conspiracy.
• Cicero. Letters to Atticus and Letters to Brutus. The most intimate documentary record of Brutus's intellectual world and his relationship with Cicero.
• Plutarch. “Life of Brutus.” The essential text; one of Plutarch's most carefully constructed portraits. Chapters 1–20 for the biography and the conspiracy; chapters 36–53 for Philippi and the death.
• Plutarch. “Life of Caesar.” Essential complement; Caesar's perspective on Brutus, the pardon, and the Ides.
• Plutarch. “Life of Cato the Younger.” Indispensable context for understanding the world in which Brutus was formed; Cato's death at Utica is covered in chapters 59–73.
• Suetonius. “Life of Julius Caesar.” Essential for the dictatorship period and the details of Caesar's relationship with Servilia.

Secondary Sources

• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Caesar: Life of a Colossus. 2006. Essential for the civil war period and Caesar's relationship with Brutus.
• Goodman, Rob, and Jimmy Soni. Rome's Last Citizen. 2012. On Cato; essential context for the world that formed Brutus.
• Holland, Tom. Rubicon. 2003. The most readable popular account of the whole period; good on the conspiracy.
• Tempest, Kathryn. Brutus: The Noble Conspirator. 2017. The best modern biography; rigorous, readable, and genuinely engaged with the philosophical dimension of his life.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Anonymous. Bellum Africum (African War). Account of the African campaign from the landing to Thapsus; the primary source for the terrain, the months of manoeuvre, and the battle itself.
• Anonymous. Bellum Alexandrinum (Alexandrian War). Covers the aftermath of the Egyptian war and the Zela campaign; the primary source for Pharnaces and the battle of Zela.
• Anonymous. Bellum Hispaniense (Spanish War). The primary source for the Munda campaign; written by an officer present, less polished than the other continuations but historically invaluable.
• Appian. Civil Wars, Books II–III. Continuous narrative through the African and Spanish campaigns.
• Caesar. Bellum Civile (Civil War), Book III. Caesar's own account through Pharsalus; ends before the African and Spanish campaigns.
• Cassius Dio. Roman History, Books XLII–XLIII. Narrative spine for the Zela campaign, the African war, and the Spanish war.
• Plutarch. “Life of Caesar,” chapters 49–56. The post-Egyptian campaigns through the triumphs; essential for Munda and the Vercingetorix execution.
• Plutarch. “Life of Cato the Younger,” chapters 60–72. Cato's last night at Utica; read alongside the account in Episode 44.
• Suetonius. Divus Julius, chapters 37 and 57–68. The five triumphs, the Quirites moment, Munda, and the specific remark about Cato's death.

Secondary Sources

• Fuller, J. F. C. Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier, and Tyrant. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1965. Military analysis of the African and Spanish campaigns.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006.

Works CitedPrimary Sources

• Appian. Civil Wars, Book II. Continuous narrative of the civil war; a useful supplement to Caesar's own account.
• Anonymous. Bellum Alexandrinum (Alexandrian War). Continuation of Caesar's Civil War, possibly by Aulus Hirtius; the primary source for the Egyptian campaign.
• Caesar. Bellum Civile (Civil War), Books I–III. Caesar's own account of the civil war through Pharsalus and its immediate aftermath. Use with awareness that Caesar is his own most careful propagandist.
• Cassius Dio. Roman History, Books XLI–XLII. Narrative spine for the period.
• Plutarch. “Life of Brutus,” chapters 1–6. Brutus at Pharsalus and his pardon by Caesar.
• Plutarch. “Life of Caesar,” chapters 38–48. The essential biographical account of the Greek campaign, Pharsalus, and the Egyptian war; Plutarch's portrait of Caesar at Pharsalus is the fullest we have.
• Plutarch. “Life of Pompey,” chapters 65–80. The essential source for Pompey's perspective through Pharsalus and his death at Pelusium.
• Suetonius. Divus Julius, chapters 30–68. Character details including Caesar swimming in the harbour and the purple cloak.

Secondary Sources

• Goldsworthy, Adrian. Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006. The best modern military biography; essential for Dyrrachium, Pharsalus, and the Alexandrian siege.
• Holland, Tom. Rubicon. Little, Brown, 2003. Excellent popular narrative of the late Republic and civil war.
• Schiff, Stacy. Cleopatra: A Life. Little, Brown, 2010. The best modern biography of Cleopatra; invaluable for the Ptolemaic court and the Egyptian campaign.