Augustus

The conspirators, or liberatores (freedom fighters) as they liked to call themselves, had had no other agenda apart from their act of violence. They supposed that once Caesar had been eliminated, the Republic would automatically come back into being. Peace, order, and constitutional government would resume without any further intervention on their part. This was a disastrous error in judgment, as Brutus and his friends now realized. They hurriedly left the city, where they were no longer safe, and dispersed to their country estates.

Hearing what had happened at the funeral and remembering his great-uncle and his affection for him, Octavius burst into tears.

The young man now received an even more extraordinary piece of news. Unbeknownst to him, Caesar had written a new will during the brief Italian holiday on his return from Spain in 45 B.C., and had lodged it with the Vestal Virgins (who ran a safe deposit service for important confidential documents). Three days after Caesar’s death, his father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, read out the testament at the house of the consul Mark Antony, on the Palatine Hill.

Caesar named as his chief heirs his sisters’ two male grandchildren, one of whom was Octavius, and a nephew, Quintus Pedius. After certain legacies had been deducted, including an expensive commitment to give three hundred sesterces to every Roman citizen (there could be as many as 300,000 beneficiaries), two of the inheritors each received an eighth of the residue—and Octavius received the remaining three quarters. Added to the personal fortune we must presume he inherited from his father, this would make him a very rich man.

The Roman people received another gift: Caesar’s garden estate across the Tiber, presently occupied by Cleopatra, who was busy packing her bags for a rapid exit to Egypt.

At the end of the document came the greatest surprise. Caesar adopted Octavius as his son (although it was unusual to make such an arrangement from beyond the grave, it was possible, requiring only that a special law be passed, a lex curiata). The adoption was a personal, not a political, act. However, Caesar was handing Octavius a priceless weapon: his name and his clientela, all those hundreds of thousands of soldiers and citizens who were in his debt. As he must have known, he was giving the boy an opportunity to enter politics at the top if he wished to do so—and if he had sufficient talent.

The troops at Brundisium came out to meet Octavius on the news of his approach. They greeted him enthusiastically as Caesar’s son. Much relieved, he conducted a sacrifice and made the crucial decision to accept his inheritance. More letters from Atia and Philippus awaited him. His mother repeated her request that he come home as soon as possible; his designation as Caesar’s son had placed him in grave danger. Meanwhile, the fence-sitting Philippus strongly advised him to take no steps to secure Caesar’s bequest, and to keep his own name. If he wanted to live safely, he should steer clear of politics. Philippus could foresee the political strife in which his family would be implicated if the boy was to assume his dangerous inheritance.

All his life, Octavius had been risk-averse; now he acted without hesitation. He rejected his stepfather’s advice, and wrote to him saying so. According to Nicolaus, he insisted that he “already had his eyes on great things and was full of confidence.” He would accept the legacy, avenge his “father”’s death, and succeed to Caesar’s power. This was an uncompromising statement of his political aims.

Although it would be some months before the legal formalities of adoption could be put into effect, Gaius Octavius styled himself from now on as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. The change from Octavius to Octavianus signaled a transfer from one family to another, but contained a reminder of his original kin; he soon dropped it and insisted on being addressed as Caesar. This was a message to his enemies that if one Caesar was destroyed another would immediately arise to fill his place. (To avoid confusion, I follow the convention of calling him Octavian, an anglicized version of the name he himself rejected.)

Here was the first great challenge of Octavian’s life, a once-and-for-all turning point, and he met it with calm decisiveness. We do not have enough information about his childhood and adolescence to speak definitively, but certain early experiences may have contributed to the formation of his firm and careful character and equipped him for a dangerous future.