...wealth beyond any mans dreams:
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Augustus Caesar and His Role in the Pax Romana
by Deanne Winnat
University of Central Arkansas
During the 1st century BCE, Rome was experiencing difficulties within the Republican government. In the later half of the century, one man rose to power and completely changed Rome. By using the army and republican institutions, he turned Rome from a declining republic into an empire that would last for centuries. This man was Octavian Augustus Caesar.
Octavian was able to be a part of the political scene in Rome because he came from a Patrician family who had connections within the Senate of Rome. Octavian was born on September 23, 63 BC, to Atia, the niece of Julius Caesar.(1) As the great-nephew and adoptive son of Julius Caesar, Octavian was able to gain entry into the political sphere of Rome. In 48, at the age of fifteen, Octavian, through Caesar's influence, was elected to the priestly college of the pontifices, and in 45, he went to Apollina, in Illyria to round out and complete his education.(2) His education was interrupted in 46 B.C., when he went to Spain with his great-uncle and adoptive father, Julius Caesar. While he was in Spain he and his uncle fought against the sons of Pompey the Great.(3)
It was during his time in Apollina that he learned of the death of his beloved great-uncle, Julius Caesar. When Atia wrote to him with the news of Caesar's death, she included these words of wisdom for the young soldier, " The time has come when you must play the man, decide, and act, for no one can tell the things that may come forth."(4) He made arrangements to return to Rome, and after landing at an obscure port a short distance from Brundisium, he learned that he had been named the adoptive son of Caesar, and had inherited three-fourths of a vast estate and a name that was a title to power.(5)
Upon arriving in Rome, Octavian learned that Marc Antony was holding large amounts of Caesar's wealth, given to him by Caesar's widow, and was using it to further his own means.(6) In 43, after defeating Marc Antony at Mutina, Octavian was elected consul at the age of nineteen. He then formed the Second Triumvirate with Marc Antony and Marcus A. Lepidus. The three then split the Roman lands into three territories with one of the three in control of each territory. Marc Antony received Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul, Lepidus was given Spain, and Octavian recieved Africa, Sardinia and Sicily.(7) Together these men went after the conspirators and proscribed one hundred and twenty men, among them Cicero, who had undermined Octavian and attacked Antony. In Res Gestae, Octavian later wrote, "I drove the men who slaughtered my father into exile with a legal order, punishing their crime, and afterwards, when they waged war on the state, I conquered them in two battles."(8) It was soon apparent however, that the three men could not remain allies and began to fight each other. It was during this time that Octavian began to amass much of his political power.
<more>
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http://www.uca.edu/divisions/academic/history/cahr/augustus.htm 
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