The House of Augustus : Princeton University Press : 9780691180076 : 0691180075 : 02 Aug 2019 : Caesar Augustus (63 BC-14 AD), who is usually thought of as the first Roman emperor, lived on the Palatine Hill, the place from which the word "palace" originates. A startling reassessment of textual and archaeological evidence, The House of Augustus demonstrates that Augustus was never an emperor in any meaningful sense of the word, that he never had a palace, and that the so-called "Casa di Augusto" excavated on the Palatine was a lavish aristocratic house destroyed by the young Caesar in order to build the temple of Apollo. Exploring the Palatine from its first occupation to the present, T.P. Wiseman proposes a reexamination of the "Augustan Age," including much of its literature. Wiseman shows how the political and ideological background of Augustus's rise to power offers a radically different interpretation of the ancient evidence about the Augustan Palatine. Taking a long historical pe