Augustus’ real name was Octavian or Octavius. He was the nephew of Julius Caesar and was adopted as heir in Caesar’s will. Octavian adopted his adoptive father’s name, Gaius Julius Caesar and thus began his fourteen-year struggle to gain control of the Roman Empire.
Octavian’s pathway to greatness was not an easy one nor a likely one. In the Roman world of who is who Octavian’s only real claim to fame was being the heir of the recently murdered Julius Caesar.
When Octavian took his deceased uncle’s name it was more than a marketing device that identified himself with the great Julius.
In 42 BC Octavian was allied with Antony and Lepidus in what was called the Second Triumvirate. All three wished to cash in on Caesar’s popularity and pronounced the murdered Julius a god of the Roman state.
Octavian, quick to recognize the benefit of being associated with a god had coins struck with his image on one side described as “Caesar, Son of a God” and Julius Caesar on the other described as “the God Julius.”
Octavian himself was not much of a soldier and he suffered from ill-health and was possibly a hypochondriac. Oddly, for a Roman of his rank, he appears to be quite cowardly. In alliance with Antony, Octavian defeated Caesar’s murderer’s Brutus and Cassius at the two battles of Philippi in Macedonia. Octavian claimed prior to the first battle his medical adviser advised him against participating in the battle on the grounds of a bad dream. He spent the battle hiding in a marsh. For the second battle of Philippi he claimed he was sick.
This was in fact bad publicity and Octavian later personally led an expedition to Dalmatia and then to Spain. He was wounded in Dalmatia and injured in Spain and got sick in Spain and from the point on never led any army anywhere entrusting the expansion of the Empire to others.
After the Battles at Philippi he and Antony shared the Roman world. Octavian in Rome while Antony was quite content in Egypt with the famous Cleopatra, last of the Ptolemies who had ruled Egypt since the death of Alexander the Great.