ABSTRACT
Antony and Cleopatra died in August of 30 B.C.E., formally ending the conflict between Antony and Octavian’s forces and almost twenty years of intermittent civil war in the Roman state. The developed government of the empire, however, with a set of roles for an emperor and his family, did not then spring fully formed from Octavian’s mind like some sort of political Athena. Rome had not seen a single dominant military leader since Julius Caesar over a decade earlier, and his example had ended in assassination. No one could foresee the form and consequences of Octavian’s leadership in the next few years, not even Octavian himself. In fact, many of his actions in the succeeding forty years of his life, and the actions and responses of those around him, can be interpreted as a series of attempts to understand, define, and present his relationship with the state.
