ABSTRACT
In a sense, of course, Octavian’s victory at Actium was not the fall of the republic, but a decisive stage in its evolution-decisive, because the Augustan principate that followed proved to be the way of supervising the respublica that had previously been so elusive. The evolution-some would say collapse-of the Roman republic had in fact been a process continuing and gathering momentum over at least the century before Actium. The traditional governmental instruments of the republic did not disappear but went on to be essential parts of the Augustan principate.
