The aim of this book is to primarily help students in preparing for Advanced Level examinations. It is also useful in aiding a student who wants to pursue an introductory history course at a university by acting as a resource. Therefore this short book should not be judged as a work of original research, but as a clear and accurate account of the major features of its topic, suitable for reasonably intelligent and motivated readers aged between about sixteen and twenty-one, which preferably also introduces them to the sources and their problems, and explains at least some of the chief controversies. This book aims to bring some of the more difficult themes or problems that confronts students into simpler terms that a textbook would provide to prove to be more readable and to provide better understanding. It supplies the reader with some of the results from recent research which a textbook may not have.
English: A statue of the first Roman Emperor Augus...
Augustus of Prima Porta, statue of the emperor Aug...
Augustus as a magistrate; the statue's marble head...History sees Augustus Caesar as the first emperor of Rome whose system of ordered government provided a firm and stable basis for the expansion and prosperity of the Roman Empire over the next two centuries. Shotter explores the background to Augustus' spectacular rise to power such as the condition of the Republic before he came to power, his political and imperial reforms, his personal qualities of statesmanship and unscrupulous ambition, and the legacy left to his successors. By examining the hopes and expectations of his contemporaries and his own personal qualities of statesmanship and unscrupulous ambition, the text reveals that the reasons for Augustus' success lie partly in the complexity of the man himself, and partly in the unique nature of the times in which he lived (Shotter 2).
III. Analysis
The author, David Shotter, is a Senior Lecturer in Roman History at the University of...