Slovakia in the Roman era
The reign of Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD) began a long period known as the Pax Romana, or Roman peace. Despite continuous wars on the frontiers, and one year-long civil war over the imperial succession, the Mediterranean world remained at peace for more than two centuries. Augustus enlarged the empire dramatically, annexing Egypt, Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Raetia, expanded possessions in Africa, and completed the conquest of Hispania.
By the end of his reign, the armies of Augustus had conquered the Alpine regions of Raetia and Noricum (modern Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, Slovenia), Illyricum and Pannonia (modern Albania, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, etc.).
Emperor
When Republican Rome turned into a "de facto" monarchy in the second half of the 1st century BC, at first there was no name for the title of the new type of monarch. Ancient Romans abhorred the name Rex ("king"), and it was critical to the political order to maintain the forms and pretenses of republican rule. Julius Caesar had been Dictator, an acknowledged and traditional office in Republican Rome. Caesar was not the first to hold it, but following his assassination the term was abhorred in Rome.
Augustus, considered the first Roman emperor, established his hegemony by collecting on himself offices, titles, and honours of Republican Rome that had traditionally been distributed to different people, concentrating what had been distributed power in one man. One of these offices was "princeps senatus", ("first man of the Senate") and became changed into Augustus' chief honorific, "princeps civitatis" ("first citizen") from which the modern English word and title prince is descended. The first period of the Roman Empire, from 27 BC – 284 AD, is called the "principate" for this reason. However, it was the informal descriptive of "Imperator" ("commander") that became the title increasingly favored by his successors. Previously bestowed on high officials and military commanders who had "imperium", Augustus reserved it exclusively to himself as the ultimate holder of all "imperium". ("Imperium" is Latin for the authority to command, one of a various types of authority delineated in Roman political thought.)