Augustus Part 3: Birth of a Dynasty
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How did Octavian’s triumph in Rome signal the birth of the Augustan dynasty?
It's september twenty eighth, nineteen sixty. We're at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire. eighteen miles west of London. On the back lots it's a recreation of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. It's been replicated in the finest detail, exactly how it would have appeared in the first century BC. Sprawling across twenty acres. It's a staggering piece of set design. There's a huge Ptolemaic palace. Six life size sphinxes. Buildings rendered in imitation sandstone. Obelisks adorned with hieroglyphics. The boulevards are lined with real life palm trees, albeit flown in from Los Angeles. To be titled simply Cleopatra, the film being made will star Elizabeth Taylor as the Egyptian Queen. Rex Harrison and Richard Burton will togue her up as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
For twentieth Century Fox, the giant Hollywood conglomerate behind the Enterprise. No expense has been spared. This is a movie on which it's staking its shirt. Just three days into filming, and trouble has already come into paradise. There are arguments over the film's as yet unfinished script. Producers squaring up to each other. There are trade union disputes. Moreover, there is the stark reality of the decision to film this movie in the UK. A decision undertaken for tax purposes. A sun kissed Mediterranean playground, Buckinghamshire is not. Things are about to get worse. Word has just come in from the Dorchester Hotel. A tailor is currently holed up. She's come down with pneumonia. In fact, Taylor's health will deteriorate to such an extent that the pine would shoot will have to be shut down entirely.
When the production relocates to Rome. A year and several million dollars later. It's enveloped in a whirl of chaos. There's a new director, a revolving door of producers and screenwriters, a tempestuous affair now being conducted by Burton and the fit again Taylor. Amid tales of sex, drink, drugs, and fisticuffs. And that's just the stars. Cleopatra is spiraling out of control. By the time of its eventual release, Cleopatra will have taken three years to film. At forty four million dollars, nearly five hundred million dollars in today's money. This extravagant widescreen epic. will go down as the then most expensive movie ever made. In june nineteen sixty three in New York. The film will premiere to only so so reviews.
It will virtually bankrupt Fox. Back at Pinewood, meanwhile, British comedy producers will commandeer the abandoned sets to make their own low-budget spoof. In Britain, Carry-On Clio will make back more money and prove more entertaining than the very film it's lampooning.
Around the fringes of the Cleopatra saga. A sculpt the slight figure of someone called Octavian. As portrayed by actor Roddy McDowell, he is a fay, petulant youth, sickly much of the time. He has the whiff of a bit player, not a warrior hero in the mould of Caesar or Antony. But in art, as in life, you underestimate Octavian at your peril.
From the Noiser Podcast Network. This is the final part of the Augustus story. And this is real dictators.
When we left Octavian. Events in the real Alexandria had ensured his supremacy over the Roman Republic. In just thirteen years, Octavian has gone from obscurity to political and military dominance. But that is just a means to an end. Octavian's M. O. was always about something else. Revenge. By way of the second triumvirate, alongside Antony and Lepidus, he had hunted down the assassins of Julius Caesar, his great uncle. Abroad, the liberator armies were wiped out. Back home, a bloody pogrom was instigated against all sympathizers. Later when Mark Antony went rogue. Building his own eastern empire with his lover Cleopatra. Octavian pursued him too. After the climactic sea battle at Actium. Octavian harried the couple back to Egypt.
There, they had committed suicide. He had also seen to the murder of Caesarea, Cleopatra's teenage son, Aged just 33, Octavian is the man. There is a spectre which haunts all Roman rulers. The ghost of Alexander the Great. The king of Macedon, whose conquests were undertaken three hundred years before.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How did Octavian’s triumph in Rome signal the birth of the Augustan dynasty?
0:00–8:08
2
Why did Augustus grant himself emergency powers and then return them to the Senate?
8:08–15:59
3
What strategies did Augustus use to reshape the Roman political system into the Principate?
15:59–24:03
4
How did Augustus secure his succession and why did the lack of an heir cause a crisis?
24:03–32:04
5
What role did Augustus’ moral legislation (e.g., adultery laws) play in his image‑building?
32:04–40:15
6
How did Augustus expand and then limit the empire’s frontiers (e.g., Germania, Spain, Africa)?
40:15–47:54
7
Why is the Pax Romana considered Augustus’ greatest legacy?
47:54–56:22
8
How did Augustus’ death and the subsequent succession shape the future of the Roman Empire?
56:22–1:05:04