The Rise of Augustus Caesar and the Roman Empire He was the nineteen year old student who inherited a name and conquered a known world. While his great-uncle Julius Caesar was a man of the battlefield, this young heir was a master of the long game a strategist who dismantled a five hundred year old Republic to build an Empire that would endure for centuries. Born Gaius Octavius, he would die as Augustus, the "Revered One," having fundamentally altered the political geography of the Mediterranean