Confounding character of Caesar’s shadowy heir

AUGUSTUS: THE LIFE OF ROME’S FIRST EMPEROR

By Anthony Everitt

Random House, $26.95, 416 pages

REVIEWED BY BLAKE D. DVORAK

Anthony Everitt did a remarkable thing a few years ago when he turned Latin students’ most loathed subject into a bestselling star with “Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician.” In fleshing out the ingenious, idealistic and near-repellent narcissist, Mr. Everitt set his mark as the premier Roman biographer — except for that “greatest politician” part, which one hopes was an overzealous publisher’s mistake.

Mr. Everitt returns to first century B.C. Rome with a politician who truly deserves that appellation, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, better known as Augustus. It is an ambitious choice for a second book, but Mr. Everitt handles one of history’s most complicated personages with considerable skill.

Whereas Cicero left behind a voluminous collection of speeches, books and — unfortunately for his reputation — personal letters, we have very few primary sources on Augustus. Later Roman historians like Tacitus and Suetonius did manage to cobble together a good chunk of information Augustus had suppressed, most of it concerning his pre-emperor days. But the sad reality is that there are major gaps biographers like Mr. Everitt are forced to contend with — and offer creative guesses to fill.

Mr. Everitt offers us his first guess in the opening pages. He cleverly introduces readers to Augustus near the end of the aging monarch’s life, while he is busily preparing a smooth transition for his successor, Tiberius. The task required Augustus to order the execution of the son of one of his most trusted advisers. It also required — in Mr. Everitt’s guesswork — Augustus to die while the pieces were all in place. So the author imagines that Augustus had his own wife poison him to death. Nothing, not not even his life, could be left to chance.

Alas, in the case of Augustus, guesswork isn’t enough. Mr. Everitt isn’t the first biographer or historian to notice that Augustus himself was somewhat “shadowy.” The author quotes Tennyson’s phrase “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,” a description that certainly fits.

The reasons for this are twofold. First, Augustus intended for it to be that way. Take his famous last words: “Have I played my part in the farce of life well enough?” Actors play parts; human beings play themselves.

Much more importantly, however, Augustus appeared to undergo a change, literally, from a little tyrant to a philosopher king. In Mr. Everitt’s words, “He was devious, untrustworthy, and bloodthirsty. But once he had established his authority, he governed efficiently and justly, generally allowed freedom of speech, and promoted the rule of law.” Today we might simply say Augustus matured.

The ancients would have thought somewhat differently. Character to them was unchanging. The differences a person might show over the course of a lifetime was considered either illusory or revelatory. So, for instance, if a man seemed to improve with age (or vice versa), he was either revealing more of his true character or just doing a better job of concealing it. Cynical crowd.

Whichever persuasion you prefer, this presents a major problem for biographers, and certainly for Mr. Everitt, who says his intention is to make Augustus “come alive.” That’s difficult to do when the “real” Augustus confounds us with two wholly different sides to his character. Which one was authentic?

Indeed, Mr. Everitt does a fine job of chronicling Augustus’ “extraordinary and often terrifying” life. His research is so thoroughly complimented by his writing style that at times I wished he had produced a novel, rather than a biography.

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