Calpurnia and Heraklia have stimulated some more serious thoughts ... for which we should all be grateful.

Caesar was a Roman in full. An old Roman, really. Perhaps he was a reluctant king while being an eager dictator.

Not so Octavian. Not so Antony. Not even Lepidus. They were new Romans with a new way of seeing the ultimate prize of political competition. Octavian's settlement required Romans to adopt a completely different relation to the princeps. Romans were no longer free -- in the old way -- to compete with Augustus to become first among equals. Augustus' demarcations were carefully but definitely traced and remade Roman customs. T.P. Wiseman provides an instructive review in his Roman Political Life, 90BC-AD69 by presenting memorial inscriptions where "firsts" and "foremosts" defined a man's success. After Augustus, indeed during his reign, these inscriptions very consciously acknowledged not his prominence but his sacrosanct pre-eminence.

The change might have been imagined by Caesar, extolled by Antony in his funeral oration, propagandized by Octavian, but it was made permanent by Octavian when he transformed himself as Augustus. It is the most intriguing and surprising feature of Augustus' political accomplishment.