Mary Beard

He doesn't have a revolution.

I think if you think of a kind of Marxian sense of a revolution, it means new governing class comes in, old governing class is gone.

excluded in some way, usually violently.

There's no change of governing class.

The same elite guys are still running the show in Rome, except what Augustus manages to do is put himself at the more or less, we have to be a bit careful about thinking there was no opposition to this, the more or less undisputed pinnacle of this.

And he does that

by leaving the structures in place.

So you are still consul, right?

Eventually you're chosen by the emperor rather than elected, but people still want to be consul and they hold it for one year.

And the other sets of junior offices, they also remain, the praetors and the aediles and the tribunes.

The Senate still meets.

And yet what Augustus does is focus

the basic decision-making and the basic loyalty onto himself.

Now, how he does that in practice

Well, we've got hints, I think.

Suetonius is writing in the second century CE, writes a biography of Augustus amongst his 12 Caesars.

He gives us some hints, I think, of the new kind of idea of personal power that Augustus manages to wield in

Cleverly.

I mean, Suetonius says, when Augustus went into the Senate, as he goes into the Senate for the discussions with all the other guys, he greets every senator by name.

He goes around, as it were.