How Octavian Successfully Rebranded Himself

All those who'd stood between Octavian and supreme power had been eliminated. Half the senators of Rome, Caesar's assassins, Cleopatra's son, Caesar's biological heir, and finally the only man still powerful enough to challenge him, Mark Antony. The Republic was dead in the water and the Senate had no choice but to bend to Octavian's will and award him the title Princeps. Officially he was Rome's first citizen but in reality this once nervous young man ruled Rome absolutely as its first emperor. For the people of Rome this led finally to longed for calm and order. After a decade of civil war and bloodletting people must have been worn out, desperate for peace. A strong leader who seemed to offer unity of a kind must have been an incredibly attractive proposition. In 27 BC the Senate awarded him another new title. Octavian was now called Augustus, the revered one. The Republic was officially no more and the empire had come into being. Augustus immediately set about ensuring that his image would live up to this new title. In the Republic Roman art was famous for its warts and all portraits like this one of Augustus when he was still known as Octavian. But Augustus did away with that tradition and you can see him here now he's been immortalized as a kind of airbrushed image of perpetual youth vigor and piety and Augustus certainly put himself about a bit. In fact there are more extant images of Augustus than of any other Roman ruler. Beginning with a new name Augustus was pushing through a massive rebrand and nothing expressed this more acutely than the magnificent altar of peace he commissioned in 13 BC and dedicated to Pax, the Roman goddess of peace. There's Augustus or at least what's left of him and he's leading a solemn procession of priests. Down here is his family, there's his children and grandchildren and what's interesting is that they've ditched military uniform. Everyone's now wearing togas and they're modestly veiled and have got laurel wreaths in their hair. This image of Augustus as a pious man of the people celebrating years of peace would spring up in art all over Rome and across his expanding empire. It was clever PR strategy and a crucial factor in his success. In 8 BC the senate even named the eighth month of the year after him August. 2,000 years later we're still discovering new ways in which the long shadow of Augustus's reign was cast.