Power, Politics and Propaganda

         In Jesus day in the early part of the first century CE, the political power was in the hands of the Roman emperors Augustus & Tiburius Caersar. If you throw into the equation his modest lifestyle, affability  and approachability, his routine consultation of the senate, and genuinely impressive work ethic, and we have in Augustus one of the greatest and most skillfully manipulative politicians of any nation in any age.
 
In his later years, Augustus withdrew more and more from the public eye, although he continued to transact public business. He was getting older, and old age in ancient times must have been considerably more debilitating than it is today. In any case, Tiberius had been installed as his successor and, by AD 13, was virtually emperor already. In 4 AD.  He had received grants of both proconsular and tribunician power, which had been renewed as a matter of course whenever they needed to be. 

 In AD 13, Tiberius's imperium had beem made co-extensive with that of Augustus. While traveling in Campania, Augustus died peacefully at Nola on August 19 AD 14. Tiberius, who was en route to Illyricum, hurried to the scene and, depending on the source, arrived too late or spent a day in consultation with the dying princeps.. Whatever the case about these details, Imperator Caesar Augustus, Son of a God, Father of his Country, the man who had ruled the Roman world alone for almost 45 years, or over half a century, was dead. He was accorded a magnificent funeral, buried in the mausoleum he had built in Rome, and entered the Roman pantheon as Divus Augustus. In his will, he left 1,000 sesterces apiece to the men of the Praetorian guard, 500 to the urban cohorts, and 300 to each of the legionaries. In death, as in life, Augustus acknowledged the true source of his power.

An inscription entitled "The Achievements of the Divine Augustus"  remains a remarkable piece of evidence deriving from Augustus's reign.