"This commentary pays close critical attention to Dio's historical sources, methods, and assumptions as it also strives to present him as a figure in his own right. During a long life (ca. 164-after 229), Dio served as a Roman senator under seven emperors from Commodus to Severus Alexander, governed three Roman provinces, and was twice consul."--BOOK JACKET.

The representation, and retention, of power was a critical issue for the princeps and his subjects, and the contributors provide fresh political and literary analysis of aspects of the principates of Augustus, Tiberius Claudius and Nero.

Written in the author's maternal Greek, the Roman History of the third-century A.D. historian Cassius Dio is our fullest surviving historical source for the reign of the Emperor Augustus. In The Augustan Succession Peter Michael Swan provides an ample historical and historiographic commentary on Books 55-56 of the History. These books recount Augustus's last twenty-three years (9 B.C.-A.D. 14), during which the aging monarch, amid dynastic tragedies and military setbacks, orchestrated the continuation of the constitutional and imperial system developed under his leadership, which ended in his transmission of power to his son-in-law Tiberius. The Augustan Succession is the first commentary since the eighteenth century to offer full and fresh treatment of this segment of Dio's work. This commentary pays close critical attention to Dio's historical sources, methods, and assumptions as it also strives to present him as a figure in his own right. During a long life (ca. 164-after 229), Dio served as a Roman senator under seven emperors from Commodus to Severus Alexander, governed three Roman provinces, and was twice consul. An acute and interested contemporary observer of wide experience, positioned close to the seat of imperial power, he was a self-assured personality who embodied deeply conservative political and social views and prejudices. All these factors inform the pages of Dio's Augustan narrative, as does, above all, his doctrine that the best remedy for the troubles of his own age of "rust and iron" was rule on the model of Augustus. This is an historical commentary on Books 55-56 of Dio's Roman History. These books recount the last half of the reign of the Emperor Augustus, above all his orchestration of the first imperial succession. Addressed to both students and scholars, the new commentary is the first since the eighteenth century to offer full and fresh treatment of this segment of Dio's work.

An investigation of how a man could become a Roman emperor, and the failure to create an enduring, consistent system for selecting the next emperor. John D. Grainger analyses the Roman imperial succession, demonstrating that the empire organized by Augustus was fundamentally flawed in the method it used to find emperors. Augustus’s system was a mixture of heredity, senatorial, and military influences, and these were generally antagonistic. Consequently, the Empire went through a series of crises, in which the succession to a previous, usually dead, emperor was the main issue. The infamous “Year of the Four Emperors,” AD 69, is only the most famous of these crises, which often involved bouts of bloody and destructive civil war, assassinations and purges. These were followed by a period, usually relatively short, in which the victor in the “crisis” established a new system, juggling the three basic elements identified by Augustus, but which was as fragile and short lived as its predecessor; these “consequences” of each crisis are discussed. The lucid and erudite text is supported by over 22 genealogical tables and 100 images illustrating the Emperors. Praise of The Roman Imperial Succession “For a general introduction to the question of how one becomes a Roman emperor, Grainger has provided a sound guide.” —Bryn Mawr Classical Review

This collection of essays considers the challenging questions around the formation, establishment and continuation of the Julio-Claudian principate from the coming to power of Augustus. Augustus laid down the ground rules for a princeps, and the essays explore the subsequent transition of power, and how the succession and subsequent rule manifested itself, even though there was no formal mechanism for such a transfer. These essays fully utilize the extant literary, epigraphic, numismatic and visual record to evaluate Augustus’ “political legacy”. The representation, and retention, of power was a critical issue for the princeps and his subjects, and the contributors provide fresh political and literary analysis of aspects of the principates of Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius and Nero.

Augustus and the Destruction of History explores the intense controversies over the meaning and profile of the past that accompanied the violent transformation of the Roman Republic into the Augustan principate. The ten case studies collected here analyse how different authors and agents (individual and collective) developed specific conceptions of history and articulated them in a wide variety of textual and visual media to position themselves within the emergent (and evolving) new Augustan normal. The chapters consider both hegemonic and subaltern endeavours to reconfigure Roman memoria and pay special attention to power and polemics, chaos, crisis and contingency - not least to challenge some long-standing habits of thought about Augustus and his principate and its representation in historiographical discourse, ancient and modern. Some of the most iconic texts and monuments from ancient Rome receive fresh discussion here, including the Forum Romanum and the Forum of Augustus, Virgil's Aeneid and the Fasti Capitolini.

This book focuses on the succession of imperial power under the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The author investigates the mechanisms of succession of the Julio-Claudian emperors, analyses various stages of the accessions of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, as well as deals with the Julio-Claudian model of investiture of a new princeps.