Augustus

Translations of Appian’s The Civil Wars, Dio Cassius’ The Reign of Augustus, Horace’s Odes, Epistles, Epodes, and Satires, Livy’s History of Rome, Ovid’s Erotic Poems (Amores and Ars Amatoria), Poems of Exile (Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto), Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, selected lives by Plutarch, Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars, Tacitus’ Annals, and Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, have been published by Penguin Books, and editions of all the authors listed above, except for Macrobius and Nicolaus, are available in the original languages with facing-page English translations by the Loeb Classical Library of Harvard University Press. English translations of some texts can be found on the Lacus Curtius website (see below). Macrobius’ Saturnalia has been translated by D. P. Vaughan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), and Nicolaus’ Life of Augustus by Jane Bellemore (Bristol, Eng.: Bristol Classical Press, 1984).

FURTHER READING

For a succinct overview of the period, I commend H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68, fifth edition (London: Methuen, 1982). The Cambridge Illustrated History: Roman World (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2002) is an excellent survey for the general reader. Werner Eck’s The Age of Augustus (Oxford, Eng.: Blackwell, 2003) (originally published in 1998 in German as Augustus und seine Zeit) is a compact, insightful study. The Ancient City: Life in Classical Athens and Rome (Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1998) is a readable introduction to daily life in ancient Greece and Rome by Peter Connolly and Hazel Dodge, notable for the elegant illustrations that evoke the two cities as they were in their heydays. Gilles Chaillet’s extraordinary Dans la Rome des Césars (Grenoble, Fr.: Editions Glénat, 2004) reconstructs the entire city as it would have looked at the beginning of the fourth century A.D.; it shows (sometimes speculatively) the appearance of Augustan buildings and Rome’s general layout.

My researches into Augustus’ life and times were guided, in the first instance, by Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution, first published in 1939 by the Oxford University Press (OUP paperback, 1960), a classic that remains essential reading, both for its analysis of the politics of the Augustan regime and for its study of the Roman ruling class; and his The Augustan Aristocracy (Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1986) further explores the history of, and interconnections between, leading Roman families in the late first century B.C. and the first century A.D.

The massive Cambridge Ancient History, volume X: The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C. to A.D. 69, is comprehensive and authoritative, and includes a full bibliography. The old Cambridge Ancient History, published between 1923 and 1939 by Cambridge University Press, is still worth consulting.

Other modern works I found variously helpful include

Barrett, Anthony A. Livia: First Lady of Imperial Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)

Carcopino, Jérôme. Daily Life in Ancient Rome (London: Penguin, 1956 [originally pub. 1941])

Carter, John M. The Battle of Actium (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970)

Castle, E. B. Ancient Education and Today (London: Penguin, 1961)

Dilke, O.A.W. Greek and Roman Maps (London: Thames & Hudson, 1985)

Dupont, Florence. Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Oxford, Eng.: Blackwell, 1993)

Fuller, J.F.C. The Decisive Battles of the Ancient World and Their Influence on History, vol. 1, abridged edition (London: Paladin, 1970)

Goldsworthy, Adrian Keith. The Roman Army at War, 100 B.C.–A.D. 200 (Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1996)

Grant, Michael. Cleopatra (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972)

———. Gladiators: The Bloody Truth (London: Penguin, 1971)

Green, Peter. From Alexander to Actium (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990)

Jackson, Ralph. Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire (London: British Museum Press, 2000)

Keppie, Lawrence. The Making of the Roman Army from Republic to Empire (reprint, London: Routledge, 1998)