The Ascent of Caesars
It is simple to believe that Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar were the Roman Empire's unqualified gifts because both have seen a degree of personality cult development since their respective reigns. Particularly in reference to Augustus, it has been said that he transformed Rome from a city of bricks to a city of marble. Even those who weren't particularly invested in the idea of a senate, the lower classes in Rome actually had many reasons to bemoan the arrival of Emperor Augustus.
A People's History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti claims, among other things, that Augustus enacted death and sales taxes that only affected the lower and working classes. He destroyed the populist assemblies, which had provided some populist representation at a time when even the senate was proving to be too corrupt to handle.
He also outlawed several guilds, as if that weren't already disastrous enough to the working class. Augustus' legal limitations on the number of slaves an owner was permitted to free, out of concern that free labor may become overly powerful in negotiations, put the icing on the cake of the notion that he had any populist inclinations. It is understandable why Augustus' reign was plagued by poverty while reportedly overseeing the construction of marble buildings.
- Time: 58 BCE
