Throughout a long and spectacularly successful political life,
the Emperor Augustus (63BC-AD14) was a master of spin. Barbara
Levick exposes the techniques which he used to disguise the
ruthlessness of his rise to power and to enhance his successes once
power was achieved.
There was, she argues, less difference than might appear between
the ambitious youth who overthrew Anthony and Cleopatra and the
admired Emperor of later years. However seemingly benevolent his
autocracy and substantial his achievements, Augustus overriding
purpose was always to keep himself and his dynasty in power.
Similar techniques were practised against surviving and fresh
opponents, but with increasing skill and duplicity, and in the end
the exhausted members of the political classes were content to
accept their new ruler. This book charts the stages of Augustus
rise, the evolution of his power and his methods of sustaining it,
and finally the ways in which he used artists and literary men to
glorify his image for his own time and times to come.
This fascinating story of the realities of power in ancient Rome
has inescapable contemporary resonance and will appeal equally to
students of the Ancient World and to the general reader.
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