Augustus and the Roman Peace
Nailed above a plain wooden door in Rome hangs a crown — but not the kind you are picturing. No gold. No jewels. Just a ring of oak leaves, the same wreath a Roman soldier earned for one thing only: saving a fellow citizen's life in battle. Behind that door lives the most powerful man in the world. Every soldier in the empire — twenty-eight whole legions — answers to him. He could wear a king's diadem of gold. He chose leaves instead. Why would a man with everything hide it behind a handful of leaves?
Key Terms
- Corona Civica
- A crown made only of oak leaves, given to a Roman soldier who saved a fellow citizen’s life in battle.
- Octavian
- Julius Caesar’s nineteen-year-old heir, who watched the senators cut Caesar down and years later won a long civil war to rule the whole Roman world.
- Auctoritas
- The kind of power Augustus said he ruled by instead of legal force — greater respect, weight, and trust than any other man in Rome.
- Tribunicia Potestas
- A power the Senate gave Augustus letting him block any law, propose any law, and protect ordinary Romans, without ever holding the office itself.
- Imperium Proconsulare Maius
- A supreme command the Senate granted Augustus that outranked the authority of every governor across the provinces.
- Principate
- The system of government Augustus built, where one man held all the real power but the old Republic’s offices and forms stayed standing.
- Mausoleum of Augustus
- A huge round tomb Augustus raised in 28 BC, left open for any citizen to enter.
- Ara Pacis Augustae
- A white marble altar dedicated in 9 BC, carved not with chained prisoners or war loot but with ordinary families walking in a quiet procession.
- Virgil
- The poet who spent from 29 to 19 BC writing the epic that gave Rome its founding account.
- The Aeneid
- An epic poem written between 29 and 19 BC that follows a prince fleeing burning Troy to plant the seed of the Roman people.
- Aeneas
- A Trojan prince who left the queen who loved him because his duty to found Rome came first.
- Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos
- The Latin motto a ghost speaks to Aeneas in the Aeneid, meaning that Rome’s true calling was to spare the defeated and humble the proud.
- Tiberius
- An emperor whose long absence from public life let fear spread through Rome and gave his own Praetorian prefect room to rule through terror.
- Villa Jovis
- A fortress perched on the cliffs of Capri, where an emperor withdrew starting in AD 27 and governed Rome only by letter.
- Sejanus
- The scheming Praetorian prefect who filled the silence left by an emperor hiding on Capri with terror of his own.
- Caligula
- An emperor who spent the Roman treasury on floating pleasure barges with heated floors and marble decks on Lake Nemi.
- Titus
- The son of Vespasian who dedicated Rome’s great new arena in AD 80 with 100 straight days of games for the public.
- Alimenta
- A fund Trajan started to feed and educate the children of Rome’s poor, during the empire’s peak years of peace.
- Trajan’s Column
- A carved stone spiral raised by the emperor who pushed the Roman Empire to its greatest size.
- Hadrian’s Wall
- A barrier 73 miles long, built to wall off the north edge of Roman Britain.