The Augustan Age

the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus. Called the Augustan Age, it was a golden age of literature with Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphosis among its treasures. But they were forged amidst creeping tyranny and the demands of literary propaganda. Augustus tightened public morals, funded architectural renewal and prosecuted adultery. Ovid was exiled for his saucy love poems but Virgil’s Aeneid, a celebration of Rome’s grand purpose, was supported by the regime. Indeed, Augustus saw literature, architecture, culture and morality as vehicles for his values. He presented his regime as a return to old Roman virtues of forbearance, valour and moral rectitude, but he created a very new form of power. He was the first Roman Emperor and, above all, he established the idea that Rome would be an empire without end.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Mary Beard 11 episodes
  Professor of Classics at Cambridge University
• Catharine Edwards 9 episodes
  Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, University of London
• Duncan Kennedy 2 episodes
  Professor of Latin Literature and the Theory of Criticism at the University of Bristol

Related episodes

• The Aeneid
  
  21 Apr, 2005 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome
  
  10 Jul, 2008 930 History of the Ancient World
• Roman Satire
  
  22 Apr, 2010 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• Horace
  
  15 Nov, 2018 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• Rome and European Civilization
  
  20 Dec, 2001 930 History of the Ancient World
• Julian the Apostate
  
  21 Mar, 2024 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Roman Empire’s Collapse in the 5th century
  
  5 Apr, 2001 930 History of the Ancient World
• Marcus Aurelius
  
  25 Feb, 2021 930 History of the Ancient World
• Ovid
  
  29 Apr, 2021 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• Tiberius
  
  14 Dec, 2023 930 History of the Ancient World

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: b00ktfmw

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ktfmw

Auto-category: 937.07 (History of ancient Rome: Roman Empire, 31 BCE–476 CE)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, in Julius Caesar's will was read, earlier than intended, it contained gifts.