Augustus

The novel, which won the 1973 National Book Award, reconstructs the life of Gaius Octavius, later known as Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, through fictional letters, journal entries, memoirs, and official documents attributed to historical figures. Divided into three books and framed by a prologue and epilogue, the narrative spans from 45 B.C. to A.D. 55, tracing Augustus's rise to absolute power, the collapse of his personal happiness, and his final reckoning with the meaning of his life.

In the prologue, Julius Caesar writes to his niece Atia, ordering that her son Gaius Octavius be sent to study at Apollonia, a city on the Adriatic coast of Macedonia. Caesar reveals his intention to adopt the boy, has already appointed him commander of cavalry, and instructs that three companions join Octavius: Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Quintus Salvidienus Rufus, and Gaius Cilnius Maecenas.

Book One covers 44 to 29 B.C. through the voices of those who surrounded the young Octavius. Maecenas, a poet and political adviser, writes to the historian Livy years later, recalling his first meeting with Octavius at Brindisi: a shy, slight youth with piercing blue eyes who seemed too delicate for leadership. The four friends cross to Apollonia and spend months studying and training. An incident reveals Octavius's hidden strength: thrown from a horse during exercises, he remounts and completes the day's drills with two broken ribs, concealing the injury until evening.

Their world shatters when news arrives that Caesar has been assassinated on the Ides of March. Salvidienus's journal captures the moment: Octavius reads the letter, turns white, and cries out in pain. The friends debate their course. Agrippa counsels caution; Salvidienus urges an immediate march on Rome; Maecenas proposes returning quietly to Italy without soldiers. Octavius adopts Maecenas's plan, telling them they must commit their fortunes to his, with no turning back.

In Italy, Octavius learns Caesar's will names him son and heir and accepts the inheritance despite his mother's protests. Marcus Antonius, Caesar's former lieutenant and the most powerful man in Rome, treats the boy with open contempt, but Octavius perceives what his friends cannot: Antonius is afraid of them. He speaks to the people, wondering aloud why Caesar's murderers go unpunished, and announces he will pay Caesar's promised gifts from his own pocket. Marcus Tullius Cicero, the renowned orator, dismisses Octavius as a boy the Senate can use and discard. He negotiates an alliance, championing Octavius in the Senate in exchange for promises not to pursue Caesar's assassins.

At the Battle of Mutina in 43 B.C., both consuls die, and Octavius nearly perishes seizing a fallen standard. The Senate then betrays him, giving all credit to the conspirator Decimus and ordering Octavius to surrender his legions. He defies the Senate, marches on Rome, and at not yet 20 becomes consul. He meets with Antonius and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a powerful general, to form the Triumvirate, a three-man military dictatorship. Antonius demands proscriptions, state-sanctioned death lists of political enemies. Cicero is hunted down and beheaded, his head and severed hands displayed on the Senate rostrum. Maecenas describes with particular sorrow the betrayal of Salvidienus, who offered to defect to Antonius. Dismissed from service and friendship, Salvidienus takes his own life, saying he wishes to remain Octavius's friend in death.

At Philippi in 42 B.C., Octavius and Antonius destroy the armies of Brutus and Cassius. Octavius returns to Rome shockingly aged at not yet 22, yet immediately takes charge. Agrippa defeats the pirate fleet of Sextus Pompeius that threatens Rome's grain supply; Lepidus, who claims supreme authority, is stripped of all titles except Pontifex Maximus (chief priest) and exiled. Meanwhile, Antonius falls under the influence of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. His Parthian campaign of 36 B.C. ends in disaster, with nearly 40,000 men lost, but he reports a victory and Octavius accepts the lie to preserve public morale. Antonius divorces Octavia, Octavius's sister, and declares Cleopatra Queen of Kings. At the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C., Agrippa's lighter ships outmaneuver Antonius's heavier fleet. Cleopatra's ships suddenly flee; Antonius stands motionless, his face expressionless, then follows her, abandoning his forces. Both later take their own lives. Octavius returns to Rome at 33, receives a triple triumph, and falls gravely ill.

Book Two shifts to the private sphere, anchored by the journal of Julia, Augustus's only child, writing from the barren island of Pandateria, where she has been exiled for five years. An elderly woman named Hirtia dictates her memories of caring for the infant Octavius. Encountering Augustus on the Via Sacra more than 50 years later, she learns that he says with bitterness he had only a daughter and Rome.

Julia's journal traces her childhood in Augustus's household: raised under the supervision of his wife Livia, educated by gifted tutors, she recalls the games she and her father played and his constant letters from abroad. At 14, she is betrothed to her cousin Marcellus. When Augustus falls gravely ill, the reason for the hasty marriage becomes clear: He had not expected to survive. Augustus recovers; Marcellus, stricken with the same fever, dies. Augustus then marries Julia to Agrippa, his closest surviving friend. On Agrippa's Eastern tour, Julia is worshiped as the goddess Aphrodite and secretly initiated into a female mystery cult.

When Agrippa dies in 12 B.C., Augustus betroths Julia to his stepson Tiberius despite her protests, insisting that three assassination plots since Agrippa's death make the alliance necessary. The marriage is miserable; Tiberius retreats to the island of Rhodes, and Julia discovers freedom in Rome, taking a series of lovers. Her affair settles on Julius Antonius, the son of Marc Antony, raised in Augustus's household. Unlike her previous lovers, he refuses her initial seduction. Julia writes that before Julius Antonius, she had not truly known the pleasures of love.

The private drama converges with political conspiracy. Augustus learns that Julius Antonius and several members of Julia's circle plan to murder Tiberius and possibly Augustus himself. Julia is implicated. Tiberius, through his own spy, knows of the plot and plans to expose it publicly, which would force Julia's trial for treason and likely execution. In a final meeting, Augustus tells Julia that Julius Antonius has taken his own life and that the conspiracy was real. He will charge her with adultery rather than treason to save her life. She is condemned to exile. Julia writes that history will remember her for her vices, but that history will not know the truth. She concludes her journal by conceding victory to Tiberius. 

Book Three consists of a single long letter from Augustus to Nicolaus of Damascus, written in August of A.D. 14 as he drifts by yacht toward Capri. His body is failing. He has deposited his will, funeral directions, and his official record of achievements, the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, at the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. Excerpts from this public document, set in italics, are interspersed throughout the letter, their self-congratulation contrasting starkly with his private reflections.

Augustus confesses that the histories written about him are lies. He recalls the moment he learned of Caesar's death: his public cry of pain was hollow; what he truly felt was coldness, then elation. He reflects on the cost of his destiny: he abandoned the possibility of ordinary friendship, played the roles of scholar, soldier, priest, and mortal god, each a mask concealing his true self until no self remained. He dwells on the Teutoburg Forest disaster of A.D. 9, when the general Varus lost three legions to a German ambush, a catastrophe he acknowledges as one of his most serious mistakes. Passing near Pandateria, he thinks of Julia and confirms he invoked the adultery laws to save her from execution. He concludes that though Rome will fall, its moment will not wholly die.

The epilogue, a letter from Augustus's physician Philippus written in A.D. 55, describes the Emperor's last days at Capri and Nola. Augustus refuses to see Tiberius and tells Livia their marriage has overall been a success. His last words express his faith in young people to rule Rome justly. He dies on August 19, A.D. 14. Philippus notes that Nicolaus had died two weeks before Augustus composed his final letter; the physician chose not to inform the dying Emperor. Julia dies shortly after Augustus; it is rumored that Tiberius allowed her to starve. Philippus closes by hoping that under the new Emperor Nero, Rome will fulfill Augustus's dream, an irony the reader recognizes, as Nero's reign would prove one of the most ruinous in Roman history.