Caius Octavius, son of Caius, was born on 23 Sept 63 BCE to a decent but hardly spectacular family of the Roman aristocracy. When he died as Augustus in 14 CE he was the most powerful man in the world, the first Roman Emperor, hailed as “Father of his Country”.
Part of the reason for this spectacular career arose from his relationship with his maternal uncle, one Julius Caesar who, at the time of Octavius birth, had just been elected Rome’s most senior priest, Pontifex Maximus. Julius Caesar adopted Octavius shortly before his own assassination. But in the chaotic aftermath of the Ides of March, this bequest could easily have proven lethal rather than beneficial. Nevertheless, while still not yet 20, Octavius not only decided to embrace Caesar’s legacy, but to take up where his uncle/adoptive father had left off and become the most powerful man in Rome.
Goldsworthy notes a number of difficulties with Augustus, principally how to make sense of the way that the vicious warlord of his youth seemed to give way to the sober statesman of later years; how the organiser of the death squads for the proscriptions (“These many, then, shall die; their names are prick’d”) became, after Actium and the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, a patron of the arts and restorer of Rome.
Goldsworthy contrasts the magnanimity of Julius Caesar during the Civil Wars with the ruthlessness of Octavius. But of course, while Julius Caesar drew the line at using indiscriminate violence against Roman citizens, he had used ruthless terrorism during the Gallic Wars and this had contributed to the conquest and pacification of Gaul. In his own resort to terrorism perhaps Octavius was thinking about this as well as Sulla’s bloody coup in Rome, during which Julius Caesar himself almost lost his life. Octavius certainly had no intention of following Julius Caesar’s precedent of being murdered by the very enemies that he pardoned.
Goldsworthy tries to resolve the apparent contradictions in the career of Augustus within the structure of a narrative biography. But while the overall book is both elegant and erudite, Augustus still seems somewhat unknowable. This is perhaps intrinsic to Augustus. On the surface he tried to live his life simply as “Princeps”, first among equals with his fellow senators. But this was mere façade. The truth was almost absolute power and this colours all of Augustus’ utterances. Was Virgil flattered by the joking letters that Augustus sent him enquiringly about his work? Or was he frightened and uneasy by the interest shown him by someone who had in the past shed the blood of so many citizens, and still held the power to do so with impunity?
The Head of Augustus, excavated in Sudan, on display in British Museum
The official depictions of Augustus, on coins and in statuary, such as the one on the cover of this book (above), tend to show Augustus as regal and youthful, every inch the ideal of Roman fatherhood and generalship. But there is another image of Augustus, excavated from Sudan where it had been taken after its capture in Egypt by Ethiopian troops. To my mind it is the image of an altogether more haunted figure.
Goldsworthy notes that if there is one theme in the life of Augustus it is that he got better as he got older. While still able to summon moments of murder and ruthlessness right through his life, perhaps some of his later moderation grew from his own horror at what he had once been.
On Easter Monday, 24th April, 1916, a group of armed Irish rebels occupied the General Post Office (GPO) and other major buildings across the city of Dublin. It was the beginning of the Irish War of Independence that would last with varying degrees of political and military intensity until 1921.
After six days it was over, crushed by the might of the British Empire that overwhelmed them with troops and heavy guns. The O’Rahilly, despite his opposition to the rebellion, ultimately felt duty bound to participate, and was killed towards the end leading an attack on a British machine gun position to give cover to the withdrawal from the GPO. As The O’Rahilly himself had put it in a phrase later taken up by Yeats, the man who had helped wind the clock came to hear it strike.
By the standards of the First World War this was a trifling affair. In the blood bath of the Somme that would begin a few weeks later thousands of Irishmen, nationalist and unionist alike, were pointlessly butchered alongside English, Scots, and Welsh, in the name of Empire.
It is also essentially the same system that the UK government has in place for overseas domestic workers. The reforms that that government is currently proposing are cosmetic. They will do little to alter this de facto legalisation of trafficking for domestic servitude of many who are mothers sacrificing their lives and freedom in the hope of a better life for their children.
Tajikistan, it is used to sustain the privilege and power of that country’s elite.
The Protestant victims of the IRA’s Kingsmill massacre also showed a impressive anti-sectarian heroism as they tried to protect their Catholic colleagues from what they initially thought was a similar UDR/UVF attack, before the horrendous realisation that the war criminals in question on this occasion had come to butcher them.
I don’t agree with this perspective but my opinion will make little difference when weighed against the vast piles of loot that wholly legal tax avoidance could deliver. In any event that shouldn’t matter. The potential for tension and conflicts between competing moral philosophies was something which Adam Smith already anticipated in The Wealth of Nations (1776) when he argued that it was the state’s responsibility to regulate businesses: how companies can be made to make fair tax contributions is among the most pressing issues of business regulation today.
This week, 
aidanjmcquade 