The book under review is a collection of 26 chapters representing some of the most important work by J. on Augustus in the last 50 years and, despite the crowded scholarly field, the title immediately highlights the novel perspective of this volume: J. argues that Augustus was a failure and thus attempts to reject the conventional narratives of Augustan success. While some chapters constitute previously published scholarly work, many others were first presented as lectures for advanced students or as conference papers, and these have generally not been reworked. Consequently, the level of complexity and sophistication of the different chapters naturally varies. Furthermore, their origins as lectures and conference papers mean that many chapters include only sparse references to modern scholarship and sources alike: for example, the 19 pages of Chapter 3 have only 4 footnotes. Lastly, it is worth noting that the majority of the chapters, 18 out of 26, have recently been published in J. Harrison (ed.), The First Christians in the Roman World (2008). Addressing this and explicitly justifying the republication of so many chapters would have been helpful, despite the novel approach indicated by the title.

The chapters are presented in a loosely thematic structure stretching from the nineteen-year-old Octavian to beyond Augustus’ death, but ‘are in no way a biography of him, nor a history of his time’ (p. xii). Rather than reviewing each chapter in turn, I will focus on J.’s key ideas, one of which is his exploration of res publica restituta. This was long seen as one of Augustus’ most recognisable slogans, but, especially in ‘Res publica restituta: a Modern Illusion?’, J. convincingly highlights the inadequacy of the evidence to support this idea. The link between Augustus and res publica restituta remains in some parts of modern scholarship (e.g. P.J. Goodman, JRS 108 [2018], 168), which underlines how the republication of some of J.’s older work can still constitute an important scholarly contribution.

One of J.’s arguments for rejecting the ‘restored Republic’ is his thesis that scholars have been fatally misled by the modern, as well as ancient Greek, habit of viewing history as a sequence of different constitutions. Consequently, Augustus is commonly viewed as the institutor of a monarchy that replaced the Republic. However, J. perceptively points out that such a conception would have been alien to the Romans: res publica and imperium, the etymological roots of ‘Republic’ and ‘Empire’, were used for hundreds of years both before and after Augustus and not for specific constitutions. Modern scholars have thus taken ancient terms and anachronistically refashioned them into successive constitutions. Obviously, the realities of government changed with Augustus onwards but J. prudently highlights that the Romans would not have viewed this as a change in Rome's constitution. Thus, ‘Republic’ and ‘Empire’ might be used as convenient modern shorthands and modes of periodisation, but J.’s book convincingly underlines that a constitutionally sequential view of Roman history would have been largely foreign to Romans under Augustus. This insistence on the continuity between the periods before and after Augustus and the rejection of an Augustan constitutional change is the book's most pervasive leitmotif and arguably its most important contribution.

On this solid foundation, J. attempts to go further and argue for ‘the failure of Augustus’: according to J., Augustus did not wish to create a tradition of one-man rule (contra e.g. B. Levick, Augustus [2010]) and instead sought to retain the Republic's political competition. However, Augustus, and Tiberius after him, became overwhelmed by the servility of the aristocracy and the demands for a strong leader to avoid civil war. This is an intriguing proposition as it breaks free from the dichotomous view of Augustus presented by Tacitus as either a tyrant who exploited the civil wars to take control or a saviour who brought stability (Tac. Ann. 1.9–10). These contrasting poles still constitute the foundation on which most scholars evaluate Augustus, and J. deserves credit for presenting an interpretation that breaks free from this Tacitean conceptual mould.

An important prerequisite for understanding this interpretation is J.’s anti-structural approach: ‘History does not consist of processes that carry people along. History is the record of individual people, each of whom is confronted with the onus of choice’ (p. 10). Thus, the individual is placed centre stage at the expense of structural elements, which can appear slightly simplistic. This approach also manifests itself in a sometimes problematic psychologising where J. too often assumes that he has ready access to Augustus’ mind: for example, J.’s Augustus is often frustrated (pp. 51, 229, 319) or irritated (pp. 164, 194, 266), and these feelings are used as causal factors in historical explanations. This psychologising approach to ancient individuals is methodologically problematic, especially in view of the ancient habit of recusationes, where Roman politicians pretended to reject what they actually craved to avoid censure.

However, the book's biggest weakness is that it is surprisingly unfocused on the central theme highlighted by the title, namely the innovative idea of Augustus as a failure. Only the final and rather short chapter, ‘How did Augustus Fail?’, appears to deal with the theme directly. The chapter first recapitulates J.’s argument against an Augustan constitutional change and then continues: ‘He indeed “succeeded” in founding the Roman “Empire” (as Tacitus, Dio and Mommsen were to see it), but precisely for that reason we may speak of his “failure”’ (p. 319). Yet, after this, only the final lines of the chapter cursorily return to the ‘failure of Augustus’. In the rest of the book, Augustus’ ‘failure’ is alluded to at times but only superficially: a key element is Augustus’ supposed failure to preserve political competition as J. asserts that he ‘had surely come to sense the way his own ascendancy was stifling the old competition for power. This was not his intention. Of course he wanted to outclass his rivals, as the Res Gestae makes clear. But the pleasures of winning depended on keeping the game alive’ (p. 257). This psychologising claim is not backed up by evidence or further arguments, and the same assertion with little or no evidence is made elsewhere as well (pp. 46, 193, 273–4, 319). This is problematic since one could easily argue that Augustus was content to have eliminated any real rivals.

Another key element in the ‘failure of Augustus’, namely his supposed unsuccessful opposition to sole-rule, suffers from the same problems: J. asserts that Augustus ‘had advised the Romans … never to let the res publica depend on any one man’ (p. 200). Similar claims that Augustus was sincerely against sole-rule are inserted elsewhere in the book but with no additional evidence or arguments (pp. 131, 273, 319). In the above passage J. must be alluding to Tacitus’ and Cassius Dio's claims that Augustus advised against monopolising power (Cass. Dio 56.33.4; Tac. Ann. 1.11). Yet, serious problems undermine the reliability of this evidence. Firstly, Tacitus characterises Tiberius’ claim that Augustus advised him against monopolising power as ‘more dignified than convincing’ and then underlines Tiberius’ general duplicity. Essentially, Tacitus disbelieves the claimed opposition to sole-rule. Secondly, Dio's Augustus, in a post-mortem instruction, advised that power should not be monopolised in order to avoid tyranny, but J. Ober noted that this ‘appears to represent Dio's own ideas and terminology more closely than Augustus’’ (Historia 31 [1982], 317). Indeed, recent research has highlighted how Dio wished for high-ranking senators to be included in government, exactly to avoid tyrannical emperors (J. Madsen, in C. Lange & J. Madsen [edd.], Cassius Dio [2016], pp. 136–58). Lastly, several other sources mention post-mortem injunctions from Augustus without including any Augustan opposition to sole-rule (Strabo 7.1.4; Tac. Agr. 13.2; Ann. 1.11; Vell. Pat. 2.124.3). Thus, the only evidence presented for this opposition is suspect and constitutes weak support for J.’s contentious arguments. Problematically, J. never addresses these fundamental problems.

J.’s book contains numerous deeply learned chapters, and his vast expertise on Augustus is evident. Furthermore, there are central lessons to be learned from this book, especially J.’s perceptive critique of the common idea of an Augustan constitutional change. Unfortunately, however, J. does not sufficiently pursue his innovative interpretative perspective on Augustus as a failure for this to emerge as a coherent reinterpretation. It is a shame that J. did not include new research or a comprehensive postscript (the current one amounts only to a few lines) to support his perspective. Hopefully, the book's refreshingly provocative depiction of Augustus can act as a catalyst for other researchers to continue along the interpretative avenue presented by J.