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The Res gestae divi Augusti begins with famous words: annos undeviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata impensa comparavi, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertatem vindicavi. Many scholars have explicated individual elements of the sentence, such as in libertatem vindicavi,1 but the opening phrase, annos undeviginti natus, is usually taken at face value and assumed to mean no more than "at the age of 19"2 or to position Augustus in relation to other famous conquerors (see below). Yet the words do more: they connect Augustus to Romulus.
Annos undeviginti natus does, of course, have chronological, biographical signifi cance, highlighting Augustus' extreme youth: at 19, he would have been signifi cantly below the lowest typical age even for a quaestorship. As Scheid has noted, that initial reference to his youth is balanced by the text's fi nal words: Cum scripsi haec annum agebam septuagensumum sextum.3 The other chronological markers throughout the Res gestae that refer specifi cally to Augustus, however, involve his offi ces or powers, not his age.4 The only other passage that specifi es someone's age involves the imperial family and the planned assumption of power: Signifi cantly, Gaius and Lucius, annum quintum et decimum agentis, are designated to hold the consulship after fi ve years, far below the Republican lower limit of 42.5 Augustus' emphasis on his age of 19 also sets up an implied (and positive, needless to say) comparison with other historical fi gures: he was younger than Alexander the Great when Alexander took the throne, only a little older than the age at which Scipio Africanus burst on the stage, and younger than Pompey, who raised an army at 23.6
There is, however, another point of comparison for Augustus at such a young age, previously unnoted: Romulus. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote under Augustus himself, emphasizes Romulus' youth: "? after having been king for thirty-seven years, he died in his fi fty-fi fth year; for he became ruler extremely young, at 18, as all agree who have written his history" (2.56.7). Dionysius, then, not only reports Romulus to have been eighteen years old, but emphasizes that that is agreed by "all who have written his history." Although we cannot test Dionysius' claim that Romulus' age...