The period witnessed a violent transference of power and of property; and the Principate of Augustus should be regarded as the consolidation of the revolutionary process. […] Yet, in the end, the Principate has to be accepted, for the Principate, while abolishing political freedom, averts civil war and preserves the non political classes. […] The happy outcome of the Principate might be held to justify, or at least to palliate, the horrors of the Roman Revolution: hence the danger of an indulgent estimate of the person and acts of Augustus. […] To take it all for granted, however, and make a clean beginning after Actium or in 27 B.C. is an offence against the nature of history and is the prime cause of many pertinacious delusions about the Principate of Augustus. […] That axiom holds both for the political dynasts of the closing age of the Republic and for their last sole heir the rule of Augustus was the rule of a party, and in certain aspects his Principate was a syndicate.