Mary Beard

And to some extent, all this stuff I've been saying about he rebrands the Republican institutions, that's right.

But also, he gets lucky because he stays around.

Now, when I was a student, some of our teachers used to say it was all a big con trick.

The Augustan regime, he conned the senators.

You know, he said you can still be consul.

And he gave them some extra honours, you know, and they could have better seats at the amphitheatre, all that kind of thing.

And somehow it was all a kind of Machiavellian con trick.

Now, it took me some years to realise, no, that can't be.

the case.

Roman senators might have been many things, but they weren't thick, right?

Or some of them weren't thick.

The idea that they had the world pulled over their eyes by Augustus saying, don't worry, it's all the same.

I'm just living on the Palatine in a proto palace and you're still being consul.

This is business as usual.

They knew it wasn't business as usual, but he gave them enough

enough of a structure to be able to collude with it.

And in the end, the Roman governmental structure of the empire survives because the elite go along with it.

Military power, yes.

Rebranding, yes.

Elite collaborators, yes, with a capital Y. Now, in terms of elite collaborators, that's Rome itself.