This book is the culmination of a series of arguments on Augustus, early Rome and the Palatine hill which Peter Wiseman has been developing for many years. For most readers, its title will evoke the house at the south-west corner of the Palatine first excavated by Gianfilippo Carettoni in the early 1960s. W.'s core argument is that this cannot have been where Augustus lived as princeps, not merely because it was demolished when the temple of Apollo was built, but for three additional reasons: 1) the summit of the hill offered stronger associations with Romulus; 2) the archaeological and literary evidence suggests a different topography for the Augustan Palatine; and 3) its opulence was out of keeping with Augustus’ political position.

Paul Zanker claimed that the Carettoni house and the temple of Apollo were connected by a ramp, but Irene Iacopi and Giovanna Tedone's recent re-investigation has overturned this case. The ramp could not have reached the level of the temple in the horizontal space available, and in any case the upper floors of the house were demolished and its basement buried when the temple was built. Despite this, many still argue that part or all of it continued to be used by Augustus; for Andrea Carandini, the palatial character of the house makes it self-evidently his. It is to answer those who remain unconvinced by the archaeology that W.'s other three arguments come into play.

Firstly, W. works carefully through multiple stories about Rome's origins in order to demonstrate the greater attraction of the Palatine summit. Here, Varro's late republican account is key. W. argues that Augustus and his contemporaries could not have believed that the hut from which Romulus emerged to take the ‘august augury’ at Rome's foundation was the one at the top of the Scalae Caci, because Varro placed both him and the hut on the summit of the hill, allowing a clear view to the east. Secondly, he seeks to reconstruct the topography of the Augustan Palatine. The fire of a.d. 64 left scanty remains of this phase, but W. puts what we do know into dialogue with passing references in Augustan writers. The resultant hypothetical reconstruction places Augustus’ house beneath the later domus Augustana, facing out onto a square area Palatina.

But in W.'s opinion, the most important argument against the Carettoni house is that it is too grand; indeed, that it was the sort of house Augustus preferred to demolish and replace with public buildings. This policy is well attested. Velleius (2.81.3) gives us Augustus buying up private houses for public use, while Suetonius (Aug. 72.1) gives us Augustus himself choosing to live in a modest house. But W. goes further on the politics behind it. His argument is that Augustus was the champion of the Roman people against an oppressive oligarchy, and that this is why he demolished their luxury properties and returned the space to the public. For W., this is ‘the premise of the whole argument’ (167), because he believes the alternative habit of viewing Augustus as an autocrat underpins the persistent identification of the Carettoni house as his.

W.'s case for Augustus as the champion of the people is thoroughly developed, but it also raises questions. One thing I would have welcomed is some comment on the extent to which Augustus’ championing of the people was a matter of genuine philanthropy or political expedience. Certainly, he consistently presented himself as their champion, but the behaviour through which he signalled this would look the same whether he ‘really’ wanted to liberate the people from oligarchic oppression, or merely to appear to be doing so. W. knows this, but the unwary reader might come away from his book with the impression that we can be certain of Augustus’ ideological commitment to the popular cause. I am also not sure that all of W.'s arguments for Augustus the champion of the people wholly ring true. One example is the Mausoleum (26–7). W. defends this against Zanker's characterisation as a quasi-monarchical project by pointing out that the groves and walks around it were a demonstration of public magnificence, not private luxury. But if Augustus had merely wished to gift the public a park, he did not also have to build the most grandiose tomb Rome had ever seen in the middle of it.

In the end, though, Augustus’ true motivations did not matter to the emperors who followed him. They could see what worked, and W.'s hypothesis about the Augustan Palatine helps to explain some of their behaviour. In its light, we can now see Vespasian's destruction of the Domus Aurea and rededication of the space for public use not only as general positioning against Nero, but as more specific positioning in the tradition of Augustus. Indeed, it clarifies Suetonius’ comment that in building the Colosseum, Vespasian was realising a plan which Augustus had cherished (Vesp. 9.1). This has always struck me as an unconvincing claim. If Augustus had wanted to build an amphitheatre, surely he would have done so? But with W.'s work to hand, we can now understand this not as a specific claim to have built an unrealised Augustan amphitheatre, but as a more generalised parallel between Augustus’ reclamation of private property and Vespasian's. I am certainly happy to agree with W. that that is what Augustus wanted to be seen to be doing, whether or not he was really a heartfelt champion of the people.