Augustus Essays - Julio-Claudian Dynasty, Iulii, Augustus

Augustus Augustus Gaius Julius Octavius Augustus was born plain Gaius Octavius at Rome on September 23rd. His father was the first in the family to become senator, but died when Octavian was only four years old. It was his mother who had the more distinguished connection. She was the daughter of Julia, sister to Julius Caesar. He was short in Stature, and well proportioned. His body however was covered in spots and he had many birthmarks scattered over his chest and belly. As for character it is said that he was cruel when he was young, but became better when he good older. He was tolerant of criticism and possessed a good sense of humor. Although unfaithful to his wife Livia Drusilla, he remained deeply devoted to her. His public moral attitudes were strict. Octavian served under Julius Caesar in the Spanish expedition of 46 BC. It was possible that he designated to take a senior military command in Caesar's projected Parthian expedition of 44 BC, although at the time he was only 18 years old. But Octavian was with his friends Marcus Agrippa and Marcus Salvidienus Rufus in Appollonia in Epirus completing his academic and military studies, when news reached him of Caesar's assassination. He at once returned to Rome. He learned on the way that Caesar had adopted him in his will. The news sharpened his resolve to avenge Caesar's murder. When he arrived he found power in the hands of Marc Antony and Aemilius Lepidus, who were urging compromise and amnesty. Octavian refused to accept this, and succeeded in undermining Antony's position by winning over many of Caesar's supporters, including some of the legions. He was failed to persuade Marc Antony to hand over Caesar's assets and documents. Octavian was compelled to distribute Caesar's legacies to the Roman public from whatever funds he was able to raise from other sources. This no doubt raised his standing with the Roman's considerably. Octavian's own standing had been heightened by the deification of Julius Caesar. No longer addressed as Octavian but as Caesar he would now also style himself as son of god. Augustus was one of the most talented, energetic and skillful administrators that the world has ever known. The work of reorganization and rehabilitation which he undertook in every branch of his vast empire created a new Roman peace. He won genuine popular support by hosting games, erecting new buildings, and by other measures to the general good. He understood that his personal standing and security would be strengthened by governing in the public interest. Augustus was no great military leader, but had the good sense to recognize the fact. Mainly he relied on his faithful friend Agrippa to do the fighting for him. Agter Actium, Augustus took personal lead in only one campaign, the Cantabrian War of 26-25 BC in Spain. Even there it was one of his generals who brought the war to a successful conclusion. Augustus' reign was more successful that he ever could of imagined. He lived long enough to make his family seem the natural rulers in the eyes of the Roman's. Though to insure that the power should pass down to an heir of his proved difficult. Save for a premature baby his marriage to Livia produced no children. Augustus did have a daughter, Julia, from a previous marriage to Scribonia. His plans focused on Julia's husband and children. In 25 BC Augustus married Julia to Marcellus, the son of his sister Ovtavia, but when Augustus believed himself dying in 23 BC he passed his signet rings not to Marcellus, but to Agrippa. On Augustus' recovery there were all the signs of an impending power to struggle between Marcellus and Agrippa. Marcellus soon fell ill and died. This left Agrippa the obvious candidate to be teh emperor's heir. In 21 BC had him divorced his existing wife and marry the widowed Julia. Agrippa was 25 years her senior, but the marriage produced three sons and twon daughters. Augustus adopted the sons Gaius and Lucius of the Marriage as his own. Agrippa died in 12 BC, leaving Julia widowed once again. Augustus without a guardian. Augustus considered his wife Livia's two adult sons from her previous marriage. Augustus obliged Tiberius, the elder of the two, to

The Hun-Driven Barbarian Invaders of the Roman Empire

The Hun-Driven Barbarian Invaders of the Roman Empire The Mongol Great Khan Genghis ancient precursor, Attila,  was the devastating fifth-century Hun warrior  who terrified all in his path, before dying suddenly, under mysterious circumstances, on his wedding night, in 453. We know only limited, specific details about his people, the Huns- armed, mounted archers, illiterate, nomadic Steppe people from Central Asia, perhaps of Turkic rather than Mongolian origin and responsible for the collapse of Asian empires. We do know, however, that their actions induced waves of migrations into Roman territory. Later, the recent immigrants, including Huns, fought on the Roman side against other movements of people considered- by the proud Romans- barbarian invaders. [T]he status quo of the period was disturbed not only by their direct action but even more by their being instrumental in setting into motion the great upheaval of peoples commonly known as the Và ¶lkerwanderung.~ The Hun Period, by Denis Sinor; The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia 1990 The Huns, who appeared on the borders of eastern Europe, after A.D. 350, continued to migrate in a generally westward direction, pushing the peoples they encountered further west into the path of Roman citizens. Some of these, mainly Germanic, tribes eventually set out from Europe into northern Roman-controlled Africa. The Goths and Huns Agriculturist Goths from the lower Vistula (the longest river in modern Poland) began attacking areas of the Roman Empire in the third century, attacking along the Black Sea and Aegean regions, including northern Greece. The Romans settled them in Dacia where they stayed until the Huns pushed them. Tribes of Goths, the Tervingi (at the time, under Athanaric) and Greuthungi, asked for help in 376 and settled. Then they moved further into Roman territory, attacked Greece, defeated Valens at the Battle of Adrianople, in 378. In 382 a treaty with them put them inland in Thrace and Dacia, but the treaty ended with the death of Theodosius (395). Emperor Arcadius offered them territory in 397 and may have extended a military post to Alaric. Soon they were on the move again, into the western empire. After they sacked Rome in 410, they moved over the Alps into Southwest Gaul and became foederati in Aquitaine. The sixth-century historian Jordanes relates an early connection between the Huns and Goths, a story that Gothic witches producing the Huns: XXIV (121) But after a short space of time, as Orosius relates, the race of the Huns, fiercer than ferocity itself, flamed forth against the Goths. We learn from old traditions that their origin was as follows: Filimer, king of the Goths, son of Gadaric the Great, who was the fifth in succession to hold the rule of the Getae after their departure from the island of Scandza,and who, as we have said, entered the land of Scythia with his tribe,found among his people certain witches, whom he called in his native tongue Haliurunnae. Suspecting these women, he expelled them from the midst of his race and compelled them to wander in solitary exile afar from his army. (122) There the unclean spirits, who beheld them as they wandered through the wilderness, bestowed their embraces upon them and begat this savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps,a stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human, and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech. Such was th e descent of the Huns who came to the country of the Goths.Jordanes The Origin and Deeds of the Goths, translated by Charles C. Mierow Vandals, Alans, and Sueves Alans were Sarmatian pastoral nomads; the Vandals and Sueves (Suevi or Suebes), Germanic. They were allies from around 400. Huns attacked the Vandals in the 370s. The Vandals and company crossed the icy Rhine at Mainz into Gaul, on the last night of 406, reaching an area that the Roman government had largely abandoned. Later, they pushed on across the Pyrenees into Spain where they drove out Roman landowners in the south and west. The allies divided the territory, supposedly by lot, initially so that Baetica (including Cadiz and Cordoba) went to a branch of the Vandals known as Siling; Lusitania and Cathaginiensis, to the Alans; Gallaecia, to the Suevi and Adsing Vandals. In 429 they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into northern Africa where they took St. Augustines city of Hippo and Carthage, which they established as their capital. By 477 they also had the Balearic Islands, and the islands of Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia. The Burgundians and Franks The Burgundians were another Germanic group probably living along the Vistula and part of the group whom the Huns drove across the Rhine at the end of 406. In 436, at Worms, they almost came to an end, at Roman and Hunnish hands, but some survived. Under the Roman general Aetius, they became Roman hospites, in Savoy, in 443. Their descendants still live in the Rhà ´ne Valley. These Germanic people lived along the lower and middle Rhine by the third century. They made forays into Roman territory in Gaul and Spain, without the incentive of the Huns, but later, when the Huns invaded Gaul in 451, they joined forces with the Romans to repel the invaders. The famous Merovingian king Clovis was a Frank. Sources Ancient Rome - William E. Dunstan 2010.The Early Germans, by Malcolm Todd; John Wiley Sons, Feb 4, 2009Wood, I. N. The barbarian invasions and first settlements. Cambridge Ancient History: The Late Empire, A.D. 337-425. Eds. Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey. Cambridge University Press, 1998.Huns, Vandals, by Matthew Bennett. The Oxford Companion to Military History, Edited by Richard Holmes; Oxford University Press: 2001The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, by Peter Heather; The English Historical Review, Vol. 110, No. 435 (Feb. 1995), pp. 4-41.On Foederati, Hospitalitas, and the Settlement of the Goths in A.D. 418, by Hagith Sivan: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 108, No. 4 (Winter, 1987), pp. 759-772The Settlement of the Barbarians in Southern Gaul, by E. A. Thompson; The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 46, Parts 1 and 2 (1956), pp. 65-75 * See: Archaeology And The Arian Controversy in the Fourth Century, by David M. Gwynn, in Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity, edited by David M. Gwynn, Susanne Bangert, and Luke Lavan; Brill Academic Publishers. Leiden; Boston: Brill 2010