Investigate how Octavian gained, presented and consolidated power, including his use of Caesar's name, the propaganda war against Antony and Cleopatra, the victory at Actium, the settlements of 27 and 23 BC, the title Augustus, and his projection of authority through coinage, monuments, the Res Gestae and the imagery of the restored Republic

What this dot point is asking

QCAA wants you to investigate how Octavian gained, presented and consolidated sole power, and how he turned autocracy into the appearance of a restored Republic. You should cover his use of Caesar's name, the propaganda war against Antony and Cleopatra, the victory at Actium, the constitutional settlements of 27 and 23 BC, the title Augustus, and his deliberate projection of authority through coins, monuments and the Res Gestae. The skill is analysing how a ruler manufactured legitimacy and image, and reading sources, including his own, critically as instruments of power.

The answer

Heir to Caesar

When Caesar was murdered in 44 BC, his will revealed that he had adopted his great-nephew Gaius Octavius as his son and heir. The 18-year-old, now Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, immediately exploited the most valuable inheritance of all: Caesar's name, which commanded the loyalty of Caesar's veterans and the affection of the urban plebs. Against the seasoned general Antony, Octavian's chief asset was this name and the legitimacy it carried. He raised an army, manoeuvred between the Senate and Antony, and in 43 BC joined Antony and Lepidus in the Second Triumvirate, sharing in the proscriptions that killed Cicero and the defeat of Caesar's assassins at Philippi in 42 BC.

The propaganda war and Actium

The contest with Antony was won partly by arms and partly by image. Octavian presented himself as the defender of Rome, Italy and traditional values, and Antony as a Roman gone native, enslaved by the foreign queen Cleopatra and intending to subordinate Rome to the East. He publicised Antony's will and the Donations of Alexandria as proof. Crucially, Octavian declared war on Cleopatra, not Antony, reframing a civil war as a foreign war and an oath of loyalty (the coniuratio of all Italy) bound the western provinces to him. The naval victory at Actium in 31 BC, won by his admiral Agrippa, destroyed Antony and Cleopatra and left Octavian master of the Roman world. Egypt was annexed as his personal province.

The settlements of 27 and 23 BC

Octavian had learned from Caesar's murder that open monarchy was fatal. His genius was to hold absolute power while appearing to restore the Republic. In the First Settlement of 27 BC he theatrically returned the provinces and armies to the Senate and people, then accepted back a large provincial command containing most of the legions, plus the honorific name Augustus (the revered one). In the Second Settlement of 23 BC he gave up the continuous consulship but received tribunician power for life (giving him control of legislation and personal sacrosanctity) and a superior proconsular command. He held no single monarchical office; his power rested on an accumulation of traditional Republican powers and on his auctoritas (personal prestige).

Augustus and the image of power

As Augustus, the princeps (first citizen), Octavian projected his authority through a sustained and coordinated programme of imagery. His coinage carried slogans and symbols of victory, peace and the restored Republic. He filled Rome with monuments: the Forum of Augustus, the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) celebrating the peace he claimed to have brought, and a building programme he summarised with the boast that he found Rome brick and left it marble. His portraiture presented an idealised, ageless figure, a deliberate contrast to realistic Republican portraits. The Prima Porta statue shows him as a victorious general with imagery of divine favour. This visual language made his rule feel like renewal rather than revolution.

The Res Gestae

The supreme example of Augustan self-presentation is the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, the deeds of the divine Augustus, an account of his achievements that he composed himself and had inscribed on bronze and displayed across the empire (the fullest copy survives from Ankara). In it Augustus lists his offices, honours, conquests, benefactions and building works, framing his entire career as service to the Republic. It is invaluable evidence but is pure self-presentation: it records what he wanted remembered, omits the proscriptions and civil bloodshed, and presents the settlements as the restoration of liberty. It must be read as the carefully managed memory of the regime.

Evaluating the sources

The sources on Augustus range from his own account to later historians. The Res Gestae and the monuments give the regime's self-image directly and must be read as propaganda, not neutral record. Suetonius (around AD 120) supplies biographical detail and gossip; Tacitus, in the opening of his Annals, offers a sharply critical retrospective, observing that Augustus seduced everyone with the sweetness of peace while concentrating all power in himself. The contrast between Augustus's self-image and the critical tradition is itself the central analytical problem: reconstructing how he exercised power means reading the monuments and Res Gestae as instruments of authority and setting them against the later, more sceptical narratives.