Augustus
Augustus' reign laid the foundations of a regime that lasted, in one form or another, for nearly fifteen hundred years through the ultimate decline of the Western Roman Empire and until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Both his adoptive surname, Caesar, and his title "Augustus" became the permanent titles of the rulers of the Roman Empire for fourteen centuries after his death, in use both at Old Rome and at New Rome. In many languages, "Caesar" became the word for "Emperor", as in the German "Kaiser" and in the Bulgarian and subsequently Russian "Tsar" (sometimes Csar or Czar). The cult of "Divus Augustus" continued until the state religion of the Empire was changed to Christianity in 391 by Theodosius I. Consequently, there are many excellent statues and busts of the first emperor. He had composed an account of his achievements, the "Res Gestae Divi Augusti", to be inscribed in bronze in front of his mausoleum. Copies of the text were inscribed throughout the Empire upon his death. The inscriptions in Latin featured translations in Greek beside it, and were inscribed on many public edifices, such as the temple in Ankara dubbed the "Monumentum Ancyranum", called the "queen of inscriptions" by historian Theodor Mommsen.
Octavian (romance)
The Roman Emperor Octavian, upset that, after seven years of marriage, his wife has born him no child, weeps to himself in bed. Octavian's wife hears this and tries to comfort him with the suggestion that they build an abbey and dedicate it to the Virgin Mary. In thanks the Virgin will provide them with a child, she is sure (Octavian became the Roman Emperor Augustus in 27 BC, nearly thirty years before the birth of Christ. Geoffrey Chaucer also transports us back to the age of Augustus in his Book of the Duchess).