Caesar's Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire [Paperback]

'By close and intelligent readings of very different types of contemporary evidence, Osgood makes the reader understand the horror of those years in the lives of ordinary Romans. His mastery of a very wide range of modern scholarship is matched by an admirably direct and accessible style. Caesar's Legacy is a historical work of real distinction.' Times Literary Supplement

'… a fine achievement … A vision of the triumviral period now exists where none existed before. In his first book, Mr Osgood provides an admirable demonstration of original scholarship, and he is to be warmly congratulated.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review

'… an important book …' Journal of Classics Teaching

'… an important contribution to late-republican scholarship, and a captivating read for any Roman historian.' L'Antiquité Classique

In April 44 BC the eighteen-year-old Gaius Octavius landed in Italy and launched his take-over of the Roman world. Defeating first Caesar's assassins, then the son of Pompey the Great, and finally Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, he dismantled the old Republic, took on the new name 'Augustus', and ruled forty years more with his equally remarkable wife Livia. Caesar's Legacy grippingly retells the story of Augustus' rise to power by focusing on how the bloody civil wars which he and his soldiers fought transformed the lives of men and women throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. During this violent period citizens of Rome and provincials came to accept a new form of government and found ways to celebrate it. Yet they also mourned, in literary masterpieces and stories passed on to their children, the terrible losses they endured throughout the long years of fighting.

This book provides a gripping narrative of the rise to power of Augustus. It shows how his bloody civil wars transformed the lives of the people of the Mediterranean and how, though they would come to accept and rejoice in his rule, they mourned the losses suffered at his hands.

Josiah Osgood is Assistant Professor of Classics at Georgetown University, where he lectures on Roman history and Latin literature. He undertook his graduate studies at Yale University where his dissertation was awarded the John Addison Porter prize for outstanding academic writing. This is his first book.