How augustus affect roman life and culture?

Answer 1

By being the victor of the final of the civil wars which tore the Romans Republic apart and by gaining a tight grip on the state and establishing his personal absolute rule, Augustus restored political stability and peace. The restoration of peace was a marked improvement in the life of the Romans who had become exhausted with war. In his Propaganda Augustus promoted himself as the bringer of peace, the Augustan peace, and built an altar to peace (the Ara Pacis) to emphasise this.

Augustus also presented himself as a restorer of Roman traditions values, and religion. He used religion to help to justify his rule. Religion had been neglected in the days of the Late Roman Republic. He revived archaic religious cults which had been decaying. He restored 82 temples and built new ones: the temples of Caesar, Mars Ultor and the Pantheon. He allowed the growth of a ruler cult of himself. He promoted himself as the man who would return Rome's past glory and claimed that only by restoring the traditional values that had first made Rome great could he hope to make it great again. Therefore, most importantly, he restored pride in being a Roman to a population that had been almost pulled apart by 61 years of civil wars.

Augustus professionalised the army and added new territories to the empire to improve its security. He encouraged the repopulation of Italy, whose population had dropped due to the wars. He sponsored poetry and continued the period which historians have called the Golden Age of Latin literature which had started with Cicero. The three greatest Roman poets, Virgil, Horace and Ovid lived during this period.

Augustus undertook or sponsored important public works, such as the construction of the Aqua Virgo aqueduct, the Baths of Agrippa, the Forum of Augustus, the Portico of Octavia and the. He completed three projects which had been started by Caesar: the new senate house, the Theatre of Marcellus and the Saepta Julia, a massive public building. These public projects improved the lives of the Romans. Augustus also was the first man who made large scale use of marble for public buildings. On his deathbed he said "I found Rome a city of bricks and I left it a city of marble."