Augustus founds the Principate (First Settlement)
- Date
- 16 January 27 BCE
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Italy (Rome)
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
In January 27 BCE, Octavian formally 'restored the Republic' to the Senate and people of Rome, only to receive back overarching powers in a carefully staged settlement.
The Senate granted him command of the most heavily garrisoned provinces and their armies, and on 16 January bestowed the honorific 'Augustus' ('the revered'). Styling himself princeps ('first citizen') rather than king or dictator, Augustus preserved republican forms while concentrating military, financial and religious authority in his own person. This arrangement, known as the Principate, ended a century of civil war and inaugurated the system of one-man rule that governed Rome for the next three centuries. It marked the effective birth of the Roman Empire as a monarchy in all but name and set the institutional template, the imperial cult, and the dynastic politics that successor emperors inherited. Augustus's long reign (to 14 CE) consolidated provincial administration, a standing professional army, and a new fiscal order, making 27 BCE one of the decisive turning points in Western political history.
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Empires active in 16 January 27 BCE
- Han Dynasty202 BCE – 220 CE
- Roman Republic509 BCE – 27 BCE
- Roman Empire27 BCE – 476 CE
- Parthian Empire247 BCE – 224 CE
- Xiongnu Confederation209 BCE – 93 CE
- Kan Kingdom (El Mirador)300 BCE – 150 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Assassination of Julius Caesar (the Ides of March)15 March 44 BCE
- Tribunate and murder of Tiberius Gracchus133 BCE
- Codification of the Law of the Twelve Tables451–449 BCE
- Teotihuacan rises as a great city and builds the Pyramid of the Sunc. 100 CE
- Wang Mang nationalises land under the Xin dynastyAD 9
- Qin unification of China and the First Emperor221 BCE
Further reading
If you read one book
Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor
Definitive accessible biography of Rome's first emperor.
Get it on Amazon →Also worth reading
- Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar — Amazon →
Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
Novelistic account of how Augustus quietly turned the Republic into an autocracy.
Get it on Amazon →
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