Augustus opens the Res Gestae with his age: ‘nineteen years old’ (annos undeviginti natus). This places the reader firmly in the autumn of 44, rather than the aftermath of Caesar's assassination on the Ides when Octavian had been eighteen, presumably because the credibility of Octavian's claim to have liberated the res publica rested on his military intervention against Antony and the senate's commendation of it. Velleius Paterculus' summation (which echoes Augustus' formulation in the RG) is clear enough: although the domination of Antony was universally resented, no one was willing to take action against him ‘until Gaius Caesar, shortly after his nineteenth birthday, with marvellous daring and supreme success, on his private initiative (privatum consilium) showed a courage on behalf of the res publica which exceeded that of the senate. He summoned his father's veterans first from Calatia then from Casilinum; other veterans followed their example, and in a short time they united to form a regular army’. By raising an army, Octavian made himself politically relevant, but his move was strikingly illegal in two respects: he was too young (the entrance of politicians into public life had been subject to regulation since the formalization of the cursus honorum in 180 b.c.; Octavian, entering public life at the age of nineteen, was too young to have set foot on the lowest rung of the ladder, the quaestorship, for which the minimum age was thirty) and he was a private citizen with no authorization whatsoever to do anything of the sort. None the less, he advertises both aspects in the opening sentence: why?
This commentary has its origins in a neat coincidence: for the years 2015-2017, the prose text of the OCR Latin AS-Level specifications comes from a speech by Cicero, the pro (or de) lege Manilia ('In support of/ About the law of Manilius') or (our preference) de imperio Cn. Pompei ('On the command of Gnaeus Pompeius') that, for the last few years, has also been one of the set texts first-year Classics students read at the University of Cambridge. (Given that it is now part of the OCR examination, it's off the Cambridge syllabus from 2015.) Here was a perfect opportunity to link up the study of Latin at school and university. In the summer of 2013 a group of our so-called 'Prelims'undergraduates who arrive at Cambridge without having studied Latin or Greek at school and spend a 'preliminary year' bringing their Latin up to A-level standards, before starting our regular three-year degree programme-signed up to hammering out a commentary on the OCR set text. And in autumn 2013, they were joined by a group of first-year undergraduates who arrived at Cambridge with A-level Latin, happened to have their firstterm Latin literature supervision channelled to King's College, and thus got co-opted into the commentary project. All contributed key ideas and inspiring draft versions to the final product. The student co-authors, and their College affiliation, are George Lord (Christ's);
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