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Augustus, First Roman Emperor: Power, Propaganda and the Politics of Survival
Rome's first emperor, Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, has probably had the most lasting effect on history of all rulers of the classical world. This book focuses on his rise to power and on the ways in which he then maintained authority throughout his reign. It is often assumed that the close relationship between power and presentation, popularly known as 'spin', is a modern phenomenon. Augustus, however, emerges as consummate master of the political process, using propaganda to fashion his own historical legacy. Clark examines the importance of his chief political advisor Maecenas, the patron of Horace and Virgil; and of his military commander Agrippa. He also considers the contrasting fates of the main poets of Augustus' reign, Virgil and Ovid, and the public monuments that - as much as poetry -- served to shape his reputation.
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 11, 2016
Matthew D.H. Clark's Augustus, First Roman Emperor: Power, Propaganda and the Politics of Survival caught my eye because of the interesting premise of its prospectus. I was curious if Clark could argue the evidence for presenting Augustus as a predecessor to the modern world's intertwining of politics and propaganda. I banked on the Bristol Phoenix Press being a capable gatekeeper for publishing academia. My curiosity was assaulted by a souring bias comparable to that of Tacitus, and my assumption about the academic integrity of the Bristol Press was demonstrated to be a poor judgment.
Clark’s book is billeted as part of a series to introduce laymen and students to “key figures and aspects of the ancient world in order to demonstrate…[their] relevance and resonance in our world today.” If Clark’s work speaks for the series as a whole, I can only hope that later installments are abandoned and what has been produced is burned by roving inquisitors. Augustus, First Roman Emperor begins with a mechanical, stale regurgitation of the Late Republic’s history that fails to provide much more information than a half-hour cable special or HBO’s Rome series. It could be simplified as this: Julius Caesar rose, Julius Caesar fell, there was another Julius Caesar, and the process begins anew. Clark expends almost half of his barely 150-page work giving this lecture before he revisits the more ambitious points of his thesis about Augustus’ ability to wield power and propaganda effectively to rule Rome and its empire. If this is Bristol Press idea of updating the Classic curriculum, they need to seriously consider why so many people flee from the study of the ancient world after being confronted by syllabi that was stagnate during Queen Victoria’s reign and dead as the last Ptolemys in the twenty-first century.
After wasting a considerable portion of the pamphlet, Clark demonstrates an amazing inability to coalesce his thesis into a comprehensible argument. He vacillates between trying to over-simplify and over-modernize the Roman world and simply building Augustus up as a straw man to be constantly demeaned as nothing more than a crass, calculating politician resembling Boss Tweed more than any statesman or effective propagandist.
There are several examples of Clark’s stunning inconsistency. The first is that Clark constantly attempted to hold up Augustus as a near-absolutist autocrat wielding power effortlessly from a highly centralized, top-down institution. However, Clark mentions that court politics were relevant because of the primacy of Rome in the empire—a primacy that waned throughout the reign of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Augustus and his dynastic heirs needed to devote growing attention to the empire and its urban centers beyond Italy, especially as Rome’s embarrassing inability to feed itself came to dominate the imperial agenda for centuries to come. In parallel to the emergence of the provinces as challengers to Italy, Clark constantly speaks of the Julio-Claudian dynasty—and an imperial system of government—as an institution that could not be overturned after the Battle of Actium (31 BC), but he then describes how this was almost done when Augustus was gravely ill in 23, BC, and possessed no clear successor. It is likely Augustus’ death at this juncture would have plunged Rome and its empire back into another civil crisis and prolonged civil war. A return to a more centralized power under singular or collective rule was more likely than the restoration of the Republic, but this does not preclude an attempt to restore a government so recently aborted by Augustus and Marc Antony during the Second Triumvirate. Ironically, Clark makes several suggestions that Antony may have served as the Republic’s great restorer—even when he made little effort to uphold such institutions throughout his career.
Another major flaw is Clark’s repeated efforts to transmute purely modern conventions and concepts of the state to the ancient world. Rome was undoubtedly an advanced and complicated legal entity at least on par to the democratic experiments of the Greek poleis, but it ultimately possessed no clear distinction between public and private forms of power. Augustus held power through his personal auctoritas and extensive network of clients as he did by maintaining the illusion of Rome’s republican institutions. Clark states that Marc Antony was undone because Augustus was capable of making Antony’s personal life (especially his liaisons with Cleopatra) more relevant than ever before. The reality is that Antony was damned by his own hubris and his inability to ever understand that Roman society as a whole was merciless in judging the behaviors of its generals and leaders when aboard—but most especially in the decadent, hedonistic, and effeminate east dominated by its Greek culture. Antony was a capable general and a devout follower of Julius Caesar, but even the distorted evidence that survived the Augustan age makes it clear he was never as politically adroit as the man he served or that man’s adopted son. Clark’s efforts to transform Antony into some radical anti-Augustus, empowered with the ability to restore some semblance of classical Rome, are laughable and painful all at once.
After continuing to feed a particularly vicious cycle of contradiction and near-necrophilia for the lost Republic, Clark does little more than review Augustus actions and policies as princep. He makes several attempts to dress Augustus’ actions in the clothes of a modern totalitarian dictator and many more efforts to demean these actions as little more than the actions of a self-serving egotist ultimately bent on nothing more than gaining personal power. There can be no doubt that Augustus profited considerably from his position, his social stature, and the booty of the devastating civil wars (most notably Julius Caesar’s vast fortune and personal possession of Egypt), but he invested considerable in improving the city of Rome, restoring the prestige of the Roman state, and stabilizing the empire as a whole. While this did buy the emerging Principate political legitimacy and popular support, Augustus was not required to do so or show such an interest in his people. The later years of Tiberius’ reign—and the disastrous tenures of Caligula and Nero—demonstrate that with greater clarity than Clark ever demonstrates throughout the length of this book.
I forced my way to the end of Augustus, First Roman Emperor in the way gawkers force themselves to look at the train wreck of the century. I cannot recommend this book to anyone wanting to study Roman history in any informative way, and I can barely suggest it as a way to laugh at some outlandish assertions because of how bad Clark’s end product is from cover-to-cover. It disgusts me to know that this is being billeted as a textbook. I encourage any students—at any level—who are forced to read it to run far and fast to find someone, anyone, who may know at least something of what they are talking about.
Clark’s book is billeted as part of a series to introduce laymen and students to “key figures and aspects of the ancient world in order to demonstrate…[their] relevance and resonance in our world today.” If Clark’s work speaks for the series as a whole, I can only hope that later installments are abandoned and what has been produced is burned by roving inquisitors. Augustus, First Roman Emperor begins with a mechanical, stale regurgitation of the Late Republic’s history that fails to provide much more information than a half-hour cable special or HBO’s Rome series. It could be simplified as this: Julius Caesar rose, Julius Caesar fell, there was another Julius Caesar, and the process begins anew. Clark expends almost half of his barely 150-page work giving this lecture before he revisits the more ambitious points of his thesis about Augustus’ ability to wield power and propaganda effectively to rule Rome and its empire. If this is Bristol Press idea of updating the Classic curriculum, they need to seriously consider why so many people flee from the study of the ancient world after being confronted by syllabi that was stagnate during Queen Victoria’s reign and dead as the last Ptolemys in the twenty-first century.
After wasting a considerable portion of the pamphlet, Clark demonstrates an amazing inability to coalesce his thesis into a comprehensible argument. He vacillates between trying to over-simplify and over-modernize the Roman world and simply building Augustus up as a straw man to be constantly demeaned as nothing more than a crass, calculating politician resembling Boss Tweed more than any statesman or effective propagandist.
There are several examples of Clark’s stunning inconsistency. The first is that Clark constantly attempted to hold up Augustus as a near-absolutist autocrat wielding power effortlessly from a highly centralized, top-down institution. However, Clark mentions that court politics were relevant because of the primacy of Rome in the empire—a primacy that waned throughout the reign of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Augustus and his dynastic heirs needed to devote growing attention to the empire and its urban centers beyond Italy, especially as Rome’s embarrassing inability to feed itself came to dominate the imperial agenda for centuries to come. In parallel to the emergence of the provinces as challengers to Italy, Clark constantly speaks of the Julio-Claudian dynasty—and an imperial system of government—as an institution that could not be overturned after the Battle of Actium (31 BC), but he then describes how this was almost done when Augustus was gravely ill in 23, BC, and possessed no clear successor. It is likely Augustus’ death at this juncture would have plunged Rome and its empire back into another civil crisis and prolonged civil war. A return to a more centralized power under singular or collective rule was more likely than the restoration of the Republic, but this does not preclude an attempt to restore a government so recently aborted by Augustus and Marc Antony during the Second Triumvirate. Ironically, Clark makes several suggestions that Antony may have served as the Republic’s great restorer—even when he made little effort to uphold such institutions throughout his career.
Another major flaw is Clark’s repeated efforts to transmute purely modern conventions and concepts of the state to the ancient world. Rome was undoubtedly an advanced and complicated legal entity at least on par to the democratic experiments of the Greek poleis, but it ultimately possessed no clear distinction between public and private forms of power. Augustus held power through his personal auctoritas and extensive network of clients as he did by maintaining the illusion of Rome’s republican institutions. Clark states that Marc Antony was undone because Augustus was capable of making Antony’s personal life (especially his liaisons with Cleopatra) more relevant than ever before. The reality is that Antony was damned by his own hubris and his inability to ever understand that Roman society as a whole was merciless in judging the behaviors of its generals and leaders when aboard—but most especially in the decadent, hedonistic, and effeminate east dominated by its Greek culture. Antony was a capable general and a devout follower of Julius Caesar, but even the distorted evidence that survived the Augustan age makes it clear he was never as politically adroit as the man he served or that man’s adopted son. Clark’s efforts to transform Antony into some radical anti-Augustus, empowered with the ability to restore some semblance of classical Rome, are laughable and painful all at once.
After continuing to feed a particularly vicious cycle of contradiction and near-necrophilia for the lost Republic, Clark does little more than review Augustus actions and policies as princep. He makes several attempts to dress Augustus’ actions in the clothes of a modern totalitarian dictator and many more efforts to demean these actions as little more than the actions of a self-serving egotist ultimately bent on nothing more than gaining personal power. There can be no doubt that Augustus profited considerably from his position, his social stature, and the booty of the devastating civil wars (most notably Julius Caesar’s vast fortune and personal possession of Egypt), but he invested considerable in improving the city of Rome, restoring the prestige of the Roman state, and stabilizing the empire as a whole. While this did buy the emerging Principate political legitimacy and popular support, Augustus was not required to do so or show such an interest in his people. The later years of Tiberius’ reign—and the disastrous tenures of Caligula and Nero—demonstrate that with greater clarity than Clark ever demonstrates throughout the length of this book.
I forced my way to the end of Augustus, First Roman Emperor in the way gawkers force themselves to look at the train wreck of the century. I cannot recommend this book to anyone wanting to study Roman history in any informative way, and I can barely suggest it as a way to laugh at some outlandish assertions because of how bad Clark’s end product is from cover-to-cover. It disgusts me to know that this is being billeted as a textbook. I encourage any students—at any level—who are forced to read it to run far and fast to find someone, anyone, who may know at least something of what they are talking about.
June 1, 2022
men will realize they have a crush on a historical figure and write a book about them instead of doing something productive like being gay
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews