---
title: Roman Principate and early Empire under Augustus and his successors
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/
description: From the settlement of 27 BCE, when Octavian took the name Augustus, to the killing of Severus Alexander in 235 CE, Rome was ruled by emperors who kept…
section: FRAME
---

![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg)

[Regimes](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/)

# Roman Principate and early Empire under Augustus and his successors

At a glance

The Roman state ruled by emperors from the settlement of 27 BCE, when Octavian took the name Augustus, to the killing of Severus Alexander in 235 CE, during which the Senate, the magistracies and the formula "Senate and People of Rome" stayed in use while one man held the army and the last word; the page follows Augustus, the Julio-Claudians, the Flavians, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius.

- **Period:** 27 BCE to 235 CE
- **Country:** Roman Empire
- **Leader:** [Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus)](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#augustus)
- **People listed:** 8
- **Techniques:** [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/)

[View all 5 propaganda objects from this regime](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=roman-principate&leader=augustus,tiberius,gaius-caligula,claudius,nero,vespasian,trajan,marcus-aurelius)

On this page

- [The leader and the people under the leader](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#the-leader-and-the-people-under-the-leader)
- [Background and rise to power](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#background-and-rise-to-power)
- [How power was organized](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#how-power-was-organized)
- [The propaganda apparatus](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#the-propaganda-apparatus)
- [Timeline](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#timeline)
- [How it ended](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#how-it-ended)
- [Same-standard note](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#same-standard-note)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#sources)
- [In the archive](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roman-principate/#in-the-archive)

**In one line:** From the settlement of 27 BCE, when Octavian took the name Augustus, to the killing of Severus Alexander in 235 CE, Rome was ruled by emperors who kept the Senate, the magistracies and the formula "Senate and People of Rome" in daily use while one man commanded the army and held the last word; the same rule fought wars of conquest, suppressed the Jewish revolt in Judaea and erased the memory of emperors it condemned, and historians still argue about how far its monuments and coins were a directed message.

## The leader and the people under the leader

- ![Marble head of Augustus, the nose damaged, against a dark ground](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/augustus.jpg) — [Photo](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/247993): Unknown Roman sculptor, Public domain (The Met Open Access, CC0) — Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus) — Princeps (first citizen) and founder of the principate · 27 BCE to 14 CE — Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus): Read more — Took the name Augustus by senatorial decree after the settlement of 27 BCE and wrote that he held no more power than his colleagues in any magistracy (Res Gestae 34); left an account of his deeds with directions that it be cut on bronze at his Mausoleum (Suetonius, Augustus 101). — In their words — > “At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny of a faction.” > > Res Gestae Divi Augusti 1.1, in Res Gestae Divi Augusti (the Monumentum Ancyranum), translated by Frederick W. Shipley, Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press, 1924), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Augustus/Res_Gestae/1*.html) — > “In my sixth and seventh consulships, when I had extinguished the flames of civil war, after receiving by universal consent the absolute control of affairs, I transferred the republic from my own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people.” > > Res Gestae Divi Augusti 34.1 (Shipley translation, Loeb Classical Library, 1924), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Augustus/Res_Gestae/6*.html) — > “After that time I took precedence of all in rank, but of power I possessed no more than those who were my colleagues in any magistracy.” > > Res Gestae Divi Augusti 34.3 (Shipley translation, Loeb Classical Library, 1924), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Augustus/Res_Gestae/6*.html)

### Julio-Claudian emperors

- ![Marble head of Tiberius in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/tiberius.jpg) — [Photo](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tiberius_portrait_Istanbul_Archaeological_Museum_-_inv._5555_T_01.jpg): Unknown Roman sculptor; photograph by Eric Gaba (Wikimedia Commons user Sting), CC BY-SA 3.0 — Tiberius (Tiberius Claudius Nero) — Princeps · 14 to 37 — Tiberius (Tiberius Claudius Nero): Read more — Succeeded Augustus in 14 and ruled until his death in 37; Suetonius reports his statement to the senate that a prince ought to be its servant (Tiberius 29), and Tacitus's Annals treat his reign. — In their words — > “I say now and have often said before, Fathers of the Senate, that a well-disposed and helpful prince, to whom you have given such great and unrestrained power, ought to be the servant of the senate, often of the citizens as a whole, and sometimes even of individuals. I do not regret my words, but I have looked upon you as kind, just, and indulgent masters, and still so regard you.” > > Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 29 (a speech to the senate as reported by Suetonius), translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (1914), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Tiberius*.html) — > “in a free country there should be free speech and free thought” > > Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 28 (Suetonius's report of what Tiberius often asserted about lampoons on himself), translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (1914), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Tiberius*.html)
- ![Marble portrait bust of Gaius (Caligula), a young man with short combed hair, on a dark ground](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/gaius-caligula.jpg) — [Photo](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/248851): Unknown Roman sculptor, Public domain (The Met Open Access, CC0) — Gaius (Caligula) — Princeps · 37 to 41 — Gaius (Caligula): Read more — Succeeded Tiberius in March 37 and was killed in a conspiracy that included members of the Praetorian Guard and senators in January 41; Suetonius reports that he set up a temple to his own godhead (Gaius 22). His sestertius with the legend S P Q R P P OB CIVES SERVATOS is in the archive. — In their words — > “Let them hate me, so they but fear me.” > > Suetonius, Life of Caligula 30 (a line of tragic verse that Suetonius says Gaius often repeated), translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (1914), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Caligula*.html) — > “I wish the Roman people had but a single neck” > > Suetonius, Life of Caligula 30 (an exclamation that Suetonius reports after the crowd applauded a faction Gaius opposed), translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (1914), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Caligula*.html)
- ![Gold aureus of Claudius, laureate head right, legend TI CLAVD CAESAR AVG P M TR P](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/claudius.jpg) — [Photo](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/246874): Roman imperial mint, Public domain (The Met Open Access, CC0) — Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) — Princeps · 41 to 54 — Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus): Read more — Succeeded Gaius in January 41; in November 41 he answered an embassy from Alexandria by letter, accepting some honours the city had proposed and refusing others; Suetonius says he chose Britain as the place to win a lawful triumph (Claudius 17). — In their words — > “Wherefore I gladly accepted the honours given to me by you, though I have no weakness for such things. And first I permit you to keep my birthday as a dies Augustus as you have yourselves proposed, and I agree to the erection in their several places of the statues of myself and my family; for I see that you were anxious to establish on every side memorials of your reverence for my house.” > > Letter of the Emperor Claudius to the Alexandrians, 10 November 41 (P. Lond. 1912), in Select Papyri, vol. 2, no. 212 (Loeb Classical Library), as hosted by Attalus [source](https://www.attalus.org/docs/select2/p212.html) — > “Of the two golden statues the one made to represent the Pax Augusta Claudiana, as my most honoured Barbillus suggested and entreated when I wished to refuse for fear of being thought too offensive, shall be erected at Rome, and the other according to your request shall be carried in procession on name-days in your city” > > Letter of the Emperor Claudius to the Alexandrians (P. Lond. 1912), in Select Papyri, vol. 2, no. 212 (Loeb Classical Library), as hosted by Attalus [source](https://www.attalus.org/docs/select2/p212.html)
- ![Gold aureus of Nero, radiate head right, legend IMP NERO CAESAR AVGVSTVS](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/nero.jpg) — [Photo](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/246875): Roman imperial mint, Public domain (The Met Open Access, CC0) — Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar) — Princeps · 54 to 68 — Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar): Read more — Succeeded Claudius in October 54 and declared at the outset that he would rule by the principles of Augustus (Suetonius, Nero 10); in June 68 the senate declared him a public enemy and he died by his own hand (Nero 49). — In their words — > “he declared that he would rule according to the principles of Augustus” > > Suetonius, Life of Nero 10 (Suetonius's report of Nero's declaration at the start of his reign), translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (1914), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Nero*.html) — > “What an artist the world is losing!” > > Suetonius, Life of Nero 49 (Nero's reported words before his death in 68), translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (1914), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Nero*.html)

### Flavian emperor

- ![Gold aureus of Vespasian, laureate head right, legend IMP CAESAR VESPASIANVS AVG](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/vespasian.jpg) — [Photo](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/246876): Roman imperial mint, Public domain (The Met Open Access, CC0) — Vespasian (Titus Flavius Vespasianus) — Princeps and first Flavian emperor · 69 to 79 — Vespasian (Titus Flavius Vespasianus): Read more — Took power in the civil wars of 69; his son Titus ended the siege of Jerusalem in 70, and the family marked the victory with Judaea Capta coins and a triumph (Josephus, Jewish War 7.5); Suetonius reports his remark to the senate that either his sons would succeed him or he would have no successor (Vespasian 25). — In their words — > “he had the assurance to say to the senate that either his sons would succeed him or he would have no successor” > > Suetonius, Life of Vespasian 25 (Suetonius's report), translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (1914), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Vespasian*.html) — > “Woe's me. Methinks I'm turning into a god.” > > Suetonius, Life of Vespasian 23 (Vespasian's reported words as death drew near), translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (1914), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Vespasian*.html)

### Second-century emperors

- ![Bronze sestertius of Trajan, laureate bust right, with the obverse legend running round the edge](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/trajan.jpg) — [Photo](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/248058): Roman imperial mint, Public domain (The Met Open Access, CC0) — Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus) — Princeps · 98 to 117 — Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus): Read more — Fought the Dacian wars of 101 to 106, which the reliefs of the column in his forum record; Cassius Dio says the senate gave him the title Optimus (Roman History 68.23), a title that his sestertii carry in the legend S P Q R OPTIMO PRINCIPI. — In their words — > “They are not to be sought out; if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves it--that is, by worshiping our gods--even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance.” > > Trajan to Pliny, in Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.97 (c. 111 to 113); English text as hosted by J. J. O'Donnell, Georgetown University (the page does not name the translator; the same letter is numbered 98 in William Melmoth's translation on Project Gutenberg, with different wording) [source](https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html) — > “he took much greater pride in the title of Optimus than in all the rest, inasmuch as it referred rather to his character than to his arms” > > Cassius Dio, Roman History 68.23 (Dio's report on Trajan and the title Optimus), translated by Earnest Cary, Loeb Classical Library (1925), as hosted by LacusCurtius [source](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/68*.html)
- ![Worn silver denarius of Marcus Aurelius, bust right, legend partly legible](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/marcus-aurelius.jpg) — [Photo](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/248048): Roman imperial mint, Public domain (The Met Open Access, CC0) — Marcus Aurelius (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) — Princeps · 161 to 180 — Marcus Aurelius (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus): Read more — Ruled from 161 to 180; his Meditations, a private notebook in Greek, praise a polity with equal rights and freedom of speech (1.14) and his adoptive father's refusal to flatter the populace (1.16). — In their words — > “from him I received the idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed” > > Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.14 (a private notebook, written about 167 to 180), translated by George Long (1862), as hosted by the Internet Classics Archive [source](https://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.1.one.html) — > “he was neither superstitious with respect to the gods, nor did he court men by gifts or by trying to please them, or by flattering the populace; but he showed sobriety in all things and firmness” > > Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.16 (on his adoptive father Antoninus Pius), translated by George Long (1862), as hosted by the Internet Classics Archive [source](https://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.1.one.html)

## Background and rise to power

The first emperor wrote his own account of how he began. At nineteen, he says, he raised an army "on my own initiative and at my own expense"; the senate then enrolled him in its order and gave him the imperium, and in 43 BCE the people elected him consul (Res Gestae 1). Suetonius counts five civil wars in his career, from Mutina to Actium (Augustus 9). In the Res Gestae he describes the end of that period in these words: in his sixth and seventh consulships, "after receiving by universal consent the absolute control of affairs, I transferred the republic from my own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people" (Res Gestae 34). The Senate gave him the name Augustus; the Loeb editor dates the consulships to 28 and 27 BCE. Tacitus, in the *Annals*, tells the same events differently: Augustus "won over the soldiers with gifts, the populace with cheap corn, and all men with the sweets of repose" while he "concentrated in himself the functions of the Senate, the magistrates, and the laws" (Annals 1.2, Church and Brodribb translation).

![Marble statue of Augustus in a muscled cuirass, right arm raised, a small figure at his right leg, in a museum](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/fig-prima-porta.jpg)

The Augustus of Prima Porta, a marble statue found in 1863 at the villa of Livia at Prima Porta and now in the Vatican Museums; it is generally believed to copy a lost bronze. The scene on its breastplate is read as the Parthian return of Roman standards in 20 BCE, which Augustus's own account records (Res Gestae 29); the statue's date, between 20 BCE and 29 CE, is debated. [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue-Augustus.jpg): Till Niermann, Wikimedia Commons, 20 October 2007 (Exif date), public domain, Public domain (Commons file page: photographer Till Niermann, own work, public domain).

Four emperors of Augustus's family followed: Tiberius (14 to 37), Gaius, called Caligula (37 to 41), Claudius (41 to 54) and Nero (54 to 68). Nero's death was followed by the civil wars of 69, in which Galba, Otho and Vitellius each held power briefly, and Vespasian, who had been sent to command the war in Judaea (Suetonius, Vespasian 4), founded the Flavian line (69 to 96) with his sons Titus and Domitian. After Domitian's murder in 96 the line passed to Nerva, Trajan (98 to 117), Hadrian and, from 161, Marcus Aurelius. Regnal dates here are those of the standard emperor lists, checked against the ancient accounts cited below.

## How power was organized

The system rested on titles and offices that predated it. Augustus wrote that the senate decreed that his person be sacred and that he hold the tribunician power for life, that he accepted the office of Pontifex Maximus only after its holder died, and that the senate closed the gates of the temple of Janus three times "while I was princeps" (Res Gestae 10 and 13). He also wrote: "After that time I took precedence of all in rank, but of power I possessed no more than those who were my colleagues in any magistracy" (Res Gestae 34). Both the statement and the Tacitus sentence quoted above describe the same arrangement from opposite ends, and this page records both.

![A gold coin shown front and back: a laureate head facing right, and a round shield marked CL V between two laurel trees with the letters S P Q R and CAESAR AVGVSTVS around it](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/fig-augustus-aureus-clupeus.jpg)

A gold aureus of Augustus of 20 to 19 BCE. Its reverse names the Senate and People (S P Q R) around a shield marked CL V; Augustus wrote that the Senate placed a golden shield in the Senate house inscribed with his valour, clemency, justice and piety (Res Gestae 34). The link between the coin and that award is an interpretation, since the coin does not say so. [Source](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/246866): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph H. Durkee, 1899 (99.35.6), Open Access, Public domain (The Met Open Access, CC0; isPublicDomain true in the Met API).

![Chart with Augustus at the centre, the Senate and the titles he held beside him, and five columns: emperors, the Senate, army and Praetorian Guard, provincial administration, and coinage, monuments and cult.](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/diagrams/roman-principate-power-structure.png)

How power was organized under the principate, simplified from the sources cited on this page. Source: FRAME diagram. Portraits, cropped to thumbnails: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1907 (07.286.115), Open Access; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph H. Durkee, 1899 (99.35.138), Open Access; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1914 (14.37), Open Access; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1908 (08.170.332), Open Access; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph H. Durkee, 1899 (99.35.142), Open Access; Eric Gaba (User:Sting), Wikimedia Commons, May 2013; Istanbul Archaeological Museum, inv. 5555 T; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1908 (08.170.384), Open Access; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph H. Durkee, 1899 (99.35.154), Open Access, CC BY-SA 3.0 (the portraits that carry it); other portraits: Public domain (The Met Open Access, CC0).

In practice emperors depended on the legions and the Praetorian Guard, and the Guard's part is recorded in two ends of reign: Gaius was killed in a conspiracy that included guardsmen, and the Guard deserted Nero in 68. The Senate kept its place in the language of government. Bronze coinage carried the letters S C (Senatus Consulto), and the legend S P Q R, "Senate and People of Rome", appears on coins struck at the imperial mint, as on the archive's sestertius of Gaius. Fergus Millar, in *The Emperor in the Roman World* (1977), argued that day-to-day imperial government was largely reactive: subjects, cities and groups petitioned, and the emperor answered. The letter that Claudius sent to Alexandria in 41 fits that pattern. The city's delegates had proposed honours, and he accepted some (his birthday as a "dies Augustus", statues, a "Pax Augusta Claudiana"), declined to appoint a high priest or allow temples ("temples and such forms of honour have by all ages been granted as a prerogative to the gods alone"), and gave rulings on citizenship and on the city's Jewish community, forbidding Jews to bring in others from Syria or Egypt on pain of vengeance "as fomenters of what is a general plague infecting the whole world" (Select Papyri 2.212).

![Illustration: a microfilm reader and card-catalogue drawers with film strips and index cards.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/graphics/microfilm-archive.jpg)

Illustration, not an archive object

## The propaganda apparatus

**Where the word "propaganda" is used, and what is disputed.** The Latin sources do not use the word in its modern sense, and Rome had no ministry that ran a message. Modern scholars have applied "propaganda" to Roman monuments and coins, and others have rejected the word or limited it. Barbara Levick's "Propaganda and the Imperial Coinage" (*Antichthon* 16, 1982) opens by describing the view, widely held in the first half of the twentieth century, that imperial coin types were a means of influencing public opinion and, "in short, as propaganda", and then examines it. Paul Zanker's *The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus* (English edition 1988) is a study of Augustan imagery that Wallace-Hadrill reviewed in 1989 in an article titled "Rome's Cultural Revolution" (*Journal of Roman Studies* 79, pp. 157 to 164); his book of the same title (2008) argues, in his words, that "the political transformation of the Roman world is integrally connected to its cultural transformation" (as quoted by Osborne and Vout, *Journal of Roman Studies* 100, 2010). His earlier article "Image and Authority in the Coinage of Augustus" (*Journal of Roman Studies* 76, 1986, pp. 66 to 87) is a standard starting point on the question of who chose coin types and what the types did. Fleur Kemmers's work on the coin finds from Nijmegen (*Coins for a Legion*, 2006) is summarised by the American Numismatic Society as showing that soldiers stationed there and elsewhere were deliberately supplied with coins with martial imagery, and Nathan Elkins's study of Flavian Judaea Capta coins (*Israel Numismatic Research* 14, 2019) finds them uncommon in circulation and aimed mainly at the city of Rome, so that a provincial viewer "would seldom encounter" the image. Walter Eder's chapter on Augustus and tradition (2005) and Erich Gruen's essay on the ideology of war and peace (in R. Winkes (ed.), *The Age of Augustus*; its argument, as quoted in the later literature, is that Augustus "did not so much celebrate peace as the means of its accomplishment") are further treatments of Augustan ideology. Open questions are whether a central programme existed, who in the Senate, the household or the mint proposed a given type, and how many people saw and understood it. This page uses the archive's definitions for techniques and does not settle those questions.

[![Colour lithograph of the Latin text of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti on the wall of the temple of Roma and Augustus at Ancyra, with the heading in large letters (Perrot, Guillaume and Delbet, 1872)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/lithograph-res-gestae-ancyra-heading-0014.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/lithograph-res-gestae-ancyra-heading-0014/)

[Colour lithograph of the Latin text of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti on the wall of the temple of Roma and Augustus at Ancyra, with the heading in large letters (Perrot, Guillaume and Delbet, 1872)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/lithograph-res-gestae-ancyra-heading-0014/), 0014. From the collection. The heading of Augustus's own account of his deeds as drawn on the wall at Ancyra in 1872.

![A marble relief of draped men, women and children in procession, with a Greek-key border along the foot](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/roman-principate/fig-ara-pacis-procession.jpg)

Figures from the processional frieze of the Ara Pacis Augustae, including children. The Senate voted the altar on 4 July 13 BCE and dedicated it on 30 January 9 BCE; Augustus's account says the Senate decreed it (Res Gestae 12), and Platner and Ashby note that which ceremony the procession shows is doubtful. [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Children_on_the_Ara_Pacis.jpg): isawnyu (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World), 10 March 2012, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (Commons file page).

**Texts the ruler wrote or approved.** Augustus left three rolls at his death, among them an account of what he had done, which he wanted cut on bronze tablets at the entrance of his Mausoleum (Suetonius, Augustus 101). The Latin text survives chiefly on the walls of the temple of Roma and Augustus at Ancyra (Ankara), with a Greek version; the surviving copy is the Monumentum Ancyranum. Alison Cooley's edition (*Res Gestae Divi Augusti*, 2009) is the modern text and commentary; the archive's lithograph of the opening lines shows how the text looked when first drawn in 1872. The Res Gestae gives figures (nine kings or children of kings led in his triumphs, 55 senatorial thanksgivings, 890 days of thanks) and a list of honours, and the text as printed in the Loeb edition says nothing of the defeat of Varus, which Suetonius lists with the defeat of Lollius as the only two serious reverses of the reign (Augustus 23). The two statements are set side by side here, without a judgment about intent.

**Monuments, coins and the cult.** The Senate voted an altar of Augustan Peace on 4 July 13 BCE and it was dedicated on 30 January 9 BCE (Platner and Ashby, from the Fasti); Augustus's own account names the senate as author of the decree (Res Gestae 12). Augustus's account of the golden shield in the Senate house says its inscription testified to his "valour, my clemency, my justice, and my piety" (Res Gestae 34), the shield (*clupeus*) that a gold aureus of 20 to 19 BCE, shown above, marks CL V and numismatists read as *clupeus virtutis*. Suetonius says Augustus would accept a temple in a province only jointly with Rome and refused one in the city itself (Augustus 52). Suetonius also records that Gaius set up a temple to his own godhead (Gaius 22) and that Domitian's circulars opened "Our Master and our God bids that this be done" (Domitian 13). Claudius refused temples in his letter to Alexandria, as quoted above, and Vespasian is reported to have joked on his deathbed, "Woe's me. Methinks I'm turning into a god" (Vespasian 23).

**Triumph, spoils and victory coinage.** Mary Beard's *The Roman Triumph* (2007) argues that the ceremony also created room in which militaristic values could be questioned. Josephus describes the Flavian triumph over Judaea, with the golden table, the seven-branched lampstand and the Law of the Jews carried in procession (Jewish War 7.5). The archive holds the Judaea Capta denarius of Vespasian and a photograph of the spoils relief on the Arch of Titus, which Platner and Ashby show was not finished and dedicated until after Titus's death. Trajan's reign supplies two more cases. The pedestal of his column, erected in 113, names the Senate and People of Rome as its dedicators, while Cassius Dio says Trajan built it for display and as his tomb (Platner and Ashby on the forum and column). The archive's sestertius of Trajan carries S P Q R OPTIMO PRINCIPI, "the Senate and People of Rome to the best of princes".

**Memory sanctions.** After Domitian was killed, Suetonius reports, the Senate had his images torn down and decreed "that his inscriptions should everywhere be erased, and all record of him obliterated" (Domitian 23); the Senate declared Nero a public enemy (Nero 49). Eric Varner's *Mutilation and Transformation* (2004) traces the recutting of portraits of Caligula, Nero and Domitian, and Harriet Flower's *The Art of Forgetting* (2006) treats memory sanctions as a range of practices from erasure to redefinition. The Latin phrase *damnatio memoriae* is a modern label.

**Reliability of the main narratives.** Tacitus opens the Annals by saying that the histories of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius and Nero "were falsified through terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred", and that he writes "without either bitterness or partiality". Suetonius wrote his *Lives* in the early second century (about 121) and Cassius Dio wrote in the early third; each reports anecdotes, such as Gaius's "Let them hate me, so they but fear me", that cannot be checked against a second source. Roman literature also contains criticism of Roman rule: Tacitus gives a British chief the line "they make a solitude and call it peace" (Agricola 30), a speech Tacitus composed. The archive's definitions fit most clearly where the record shows them: virtue words on the shield (glittering generalities), the civic crown and the "principles of Augustus" (transfer), a self-account that omits a defeat (card stacking) and the Senate-and-People legends on coins (testimonial).

## Timeline

- 43 BCE: the senate gives Octavian the imperium and the people elect him consul (Res Gestae 1).
- 31 BCE: Octavian wins the sea-fight at Actium on 2 September (Suetonius, Augustus 17, for the battle).
- 28 and 27 BCE: the sixth and seventh consulships; the senate gives him the name Augustus (Res Gestae 34).
- 13 BCE: on 4 July the senate decrees the altar of Augustan Peace; it is dedicated on 30 January 9 BCE (Platner and Ashby).
- 2 BCE: in his thirteenth consulship Augustus receives the title Father of the Fatherland (Res Gestae 35).
- 14: Augustus dies at Nola on 19 August; Tiberius succeeds.
- 37: Gaius succeeds Tiberius; the sestertius with S P Q R P P OB CIVES SERVATOS dates to 37 and 38.
- 41: Gaius is killed in January; Claudius succeeds and, in November, writes to the Alexandrians.
- 54: Nero succeeds Claudius.
- 68: the senate declares Nero a public enemy and he dies in June.
- 69: the civil wars of the year of four emperors; Vespasian's reign is counted from 1 July.
- 70: Titus's forces take Jerusalem. Judaea Capta coins are struck under Vespasian; the denarius in the archive is catalogued by its dealer as struck about December 69 to early 70, a range that begins before the fall of the city.
- 81: Titus dies on 13 September and Domitian succeeds; the Arch of Titus is finished and dedicated after Titus's death.
- 96: Domitian is assassinated on 18 September and the senate orders his name erased from inscriptions.
- 98: Trajan succeeds.
- 101 to 106: Trajan's Dacian wars, the subject of the reliefs on his column.
- 113: Trajan's column is erected in his forum.
- 161 to 180: Marcus Aurelius is emperor.
- 235: Severus Alexander is killed by mutinous troops; this page's span ends here.

[![Silver denarius of Vespasian, reverse IVDAEA with a trophy of arms and a seated mourning woman](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/denarius-vespasian-judaea-capta-0070.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/denarius-vespasian-judaea-capta-0070/)

[Silver denarius of Vespasian, reverse IVDAEA with a trophy of arms and a seated mourning woman](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/denarius-vespasian-judaea-capta-0070/), 0070. From the collection. A Judaea Capta denarius of Vespasian, catalogued as struck about 69 to 70.

**Content note:** A Roman victory coin showing a mourning female figure as the personification of the conquered province of Judaea after the Roman suppression of the Jewish revolt; shown as struck, with the historical context on the regime page. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![Relief on the Arch of Titus, Rome: soldiers carrying the menorah and other spoils from the Temple at Jerusalem in a triumphal procession](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/relief-arch-of-titus-spoils-of-jerusalem-0081.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/relief-arch-of-titus-spoils-of-jerusalem-0081/)

[Relief on the Arch of Titus, Rome: soldiers carrying the menorah and other spoils from the Temple at Jerusalem in a triumphal procession](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/relief-arch-of-titus-spoils-of-jerusalem-0081/), 0081. From the collection. The Arch of Titus relief of the Temple spoils, finished after Titus's death in 81.

**Content note:** A Roman state relief commemorating the capture of Jerusalem in 70, showing soldiers in a triumphal procession carrying the Temple's menorah and other spoils; shown as it stands, with the historical context on the regime page. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

![Timeline of eleven dated steps from the imperium of 43 BCE to Trajan's column in 113.](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/diagrams/roman-principate-timeline.png)

Dated steps in the principate, simplified from the sources cited on this page. Source: FRAME diagram, drawn from the sources listed on this page, CC BY 4.0 (FRAME archive content).

## How it ended

The Julio-Claudian line ended with Nero's suicide in June 68, after the senate had declared him a public enemy (Suetonius, Nero 49), and was followed by the civil wars of 69. The Flavian line ended with the assassination of Domitian in 96, after which the senate ordered his inscriptions erased (Suetonius, Domitian 23). The page's span closes in 235 with the killing of Severus Alexander by his own troops; the empire itself continued after that year, and the date marks only where this page stops.

## Same-standard note

This page applies the archive's definitions of each technique to the Roman record exactly as to every other regime, and a technique is listed only where a documented example fits. Differences of context are stated, not graded: the emperors had no press, ministry or mass media and the evidence is coins, inscriptions, monuments and literary accounts written later, so questions of audience and intent are less certain here than for twentieth-century states. The rulers named here conquered provinces, put down a revolt in Judaea and saw successors erase the records of those the Senate condemned; those facts are set out as history and are not ranked against other regimes. The page treats the imperial cult and the memory sanctions as it treats any other state institution, by what the sources record. Other regime pages record other systems with their own scale, intent and context.

## Sources

- Augustus, *Res Gestae Divi Augusti* (Monumentum Ancyranum), Latin, Greek and English, translated by Frederick W. Shipley, Loeb Classical Library (1924), as hosted by LacusCurtius; Alison E. Cooley, *Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary* (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
- Suetonius, *Lives of the Caesars* (Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Domitian), translated by J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (1914), as hosted by LacusCurtius.
- Tacitus, *Annals* 1.1 and 1.2 and *Agricola* 30, in *The Complete Works of Tacitus*, translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876), as hosted by the Perseus Digital Library; Cassius Dio, *Roman History* 68, translated by Earnest Cary, Loeb Classical Library (1925), as hosted by LacusCurtius; Josephus, *The Wars of the Jews* 7.5, translated by William Whiston, as hosted by Perseus; *Select Papyri*, vol. 2, no. 212 (letter of Claudius to the Alexandrians), as hosted by Attalus; Pliny the Younger, *Letters* 10.97; Marcus Aurelius, *Meditations*, translated by George Long.
- Samuel Ball Platner and Thomas Ashby, *A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome* (1929), entries Ara Pacis, Arcus Titi and Forum Traiani, as hosted by LacusCurtius.
- Paul Zanker, *The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus* (University of Michigan Press, 1988); Karl Galinsky, *Augustan Culture* (Princeton University Press, 1996); Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "Image and Authority in the Coinage of Augustus", *Journal of Roman Studies* 76 (1986), pp. 66 to 87, and *Rome's Cultural Revolution* (Cambridge University Press, 2008); Ronald Syme, *The Roman Revolution* (1939).
- Fergus Millar, *The Emperor in the Roman World* (Duckworth, 1977); Barbara Levick, "Propaganda and the Imperial Coinage", *Antichthon* 16 (1982), pp. 104 to 116; Fleur Kemmers, *Coins for a Legion* (2006); Nathan T. Elkins, "Publicizing Victory: The Frequency and Audience of Flavian 'Judaea Capta' Coins from the Imperial Mints", *Israel Numismatic Research* 14 (2019), pp. 117 to 130.
- Walter Eder, "Augustus and the Power of Tradition", in Karl Galinsky (ed.), *The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus* (2005), pp. 13 to 32; Erich S. Gruen, "Augustus and the Ideology of War and Peace", in R. Winkes (ed.), *The Age of Augustus* (1986), pp. 51 to 72; Mary Beard, *The Roman Triumph* (Harvard University Press, 2007).
- Eric R. Varner, *Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture* (Brill, 2004); Harriet I. Flower, *The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture* (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
- Regnal dates were cross-checked against the table in Wikipedia's "List of Roman emperors" and the dates of events against the ancient and modern works above.

## In the archive

### Collection objects (5)

- [Colour lithograph of the Latin text of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti on the wall of the temple of Roma and Augustus at Ancyra, with the heading in large letters (Perrot, Guillaume and Delbet, 1872)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/lithograph-res-gestae-ancyra-heading-0014/) (Roman Empire · 0014 · Card stacking, Glittering generalities)
- [Bronze sestertius of Gaius (Caligula), reverse S P Q R P P OB CIVES SERVATOS in an oak wreath](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sestertius-caligula-ob-cives-servatos-0037/) (Roman Empire · 0037 · Testimonial, Transfer)
- [Silver denarius of Vespasian, reverse IVDAEA with a trophy of arms and a seated mourning woman](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/denarius-vespasian-judaea-capta-0070/) (Roman Empire · 0070 · Card stacking). Content note: A Roman victory coin showing a mourning female figure as the personification of the conquered province of Judaea after the Roman suppression of the Jewish revolt; shown as struck, with the historical context on the regime page.
- [Relief on the Arch of Titus, Rome: soldiers carrying the menorah and other spoils from the Temple at Jerusalem in a triumphal procession](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/relief-arch-of-titus-spoils-of-jerusalem-0081/) (Roman Empire · 0081 · Card stacking). Content note: A Roman state relief commemorating the capture of Jerusalem in 70, showing soldiers in a triumphal procession carrying the Temple's menorah and other spoils; shown as it stands, with the historical context on the regime page.
- [Bronze sestertius of Trajan, reverse S P Q R OPTIMO PRINCIPI, S C, the emperor on horseback riding down an enemy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sestertius-trajan-optimo-principi-0103/) (Roman Empire · 0103 · Testimonial, Glittering generalities)