• Why did the Republic break down in violence?
• Was Antony’s relationship with Cleopatra a break with Roman values?
• Why did Octavian restore elements of the Republican system in 28 and 27 BC and how might people have understood his actions?
• Was there a crisis in 23 – 20 BC and how was it resolved?
• What role did the plebs play in the Augustan regime?
• How and why did Augustus and Agrippa invest so much in the infra-structure of the city of Rome?
• What is the relationship between the poetry of the time and the politics of the Augustan regime?
• Can we read Augustan values in the architectural monuments of the period?
• How important was military success in the representation of the regime?
• How can we reconcile Augustan claims to have brought peace to Rome with his programme of conquests?
• Why did Augustus legislate on moral issues?
• Why did the women of the imperial family assume prominence in the Augustan period?
• How important was ‘the Augustan circle’ in the workings of the regime?
• What role did Agrippa play in the regime?
• What role did Maecenas play in the regime?
• Why did an imperial cult develop under Augustus?
• Was there significant opposition to Augustus?
• What do the troubles in the imperial family in the last decades of Augustan rule tell us about the nature of the Augustan regime?
• To what did Tiberius succeed?
• How might the different perspectives of the key sources (Cassius Dio/Suetonius) distort our understanding of the reign of Augustus?
• How should we approach the Res Gestae Divi Augusti?
• Was Augustus a monarch?
• To what extent is the loss of liberty a price worth paying for social order?
• Was the Augustan regime a totalitarian state?
• Is it possible to have a monarchic regime which is also popular?
• To what extent is resistance possible to a regime as powerful and long-lasting as the Augustan regime?

Augustus                                                                                                              Tiberius