I never thought much about Eightey’s1 story when I wasn’t actually reading part of it. Nobody really did, I think. It seemed like ancient history, not all that relevant to everyday life.
Eightey was a rich kid, but not a particularly impressive one. He was kind of a try-hard in his younger years. He only really got his feet under him when he went into business with some buddies of his Dad.
Yeah, Eightey was an entrepreneur, of sorts. That is, to say, he went into the family business as soon as he got a chance. Alas, he didn’t work very well with others. He was plagued by bad luck. He had a lust for glory and a need to be on top. He always kept his own council rather than listening to advisors and mentors. Sure, he was a golden-haired protege of a powerful family, but he was so pig-headed, so manipulative, and so obsessed with control that he wound up tanking every high-profile venture he got involved in.
No matter what he did, he couldn’t get any respect. In the early years, when he was the young guy on the team, that might have been forgivable. But later on, when he’d proved his worth and had monuments built in his name, it stuck in his craw. He was the ultimate spurned nepo-baby—people only wanted him for his connections, to ride his name, and to ride on his coat tails. When those coat tails vanished, he had to scramble for himself again.
But he did eventually figure out the game, and when he did, he played it well. His early political career took advantage of a fractious, fragmented environment where the government was divided against itself over matters of both foreign and domestic policy and poised on the edge of a constitutional crisis. His first attempts at leadership were mixed at best—he played the PR game well, he got away with breaking rules whenever it suited him (even to the point of appropriating public funds), but he was frustrated at every turn by partisans for the corrupt establishment.
He finally realized that he needed to recruit allies who were also shut out of the corridors of power, but who did not want to much of the spotlight themselves. He married a hotter, younger wife (his third, actually) who had her own set of valuable connections, and he burnished his aristocratic credentials.
But on his final run for power, he was not expected to win. The perpetual underdog, he played his enemies off against each other even as they and their partisans sought his death. In the confusion and noise he managed to destroy both the credibility of his enemies and the morale of their forces.
He took power in the name of the people, and swore to restore unity and dignity and piety to their fractious republic. He promised sweeping reforms, undertaken on behalf of the people and in the name of the honor of the country. He swore to restore morality and common sense and family values in the wake of the moral insanity and protracted violence of the previous few years.
And, though he didn’t invoke the name much, everyone understood that his rule would be the continuation of the tradition begun a generation earlier by another leader who was resented by the powerful but much-loved by the hoi poloi.
He planted his banner on Mars Hill, and his military and diplomatic actions would expand the reach of his empire beyond the known corners of the world, initiating a new age of prosperity, peace, and strength that would restore the ailing spirit of his fading republic.
His enemies were not happy, but after he cleaned house he mollified them by speaking well of them in public, and by declining to grab for titles he was not strictly entitled to by law (something everyone expected he would do).
Thus did Eightey secure the brightest era of the longest-lasting republic in history, ushering in that short-lived golden age at the price of the republic itself. His cronies took over after him, but things were never the same—none of them had the people-savvy (or the genius wife) to run the show with half the finesse he did. His successors would all call themselves something equivalent to “King,” and they claimed the right to rule in his stead, using his name as their title.
And that name?
Gaius Octavius Caesar.
Though he himself would be known forever to history with the only title he allowed (well, forced) the Roman Senate to bestow on him. It would ultimately prove to be a suicidal move for the Senate, as it marked him (and not them) as “The Greatest” man in Rome:
Augustus.
I’ve thought a lot about him today.
I thought you might want to, as well.
Yes, that is a proper name.
When a government of the people, by the people, and for the people fails, it is ultimately the people's fault. We make much of the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of government. But it is not the form of government that makes the ultimate difference, it is the people. It is the people both within and without government.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
>at the price of the republic itself
The republic had been (un)dead by then anyway.