Who was the first emperor of the Roman Empire?

Augustus was the first emperor of the Roman Empire.

He was born Gaius Octavius in 63 BCE and became Julius Caesar’s adopted heir after Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE. During the following civil wars, Octavian defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE.

In 27 BCE, the Senate granted him the name Augustus and formally returned power to republican institutions, while he retained overwhelming authority over the army and provinces. This carefully managed settlement marked the beginning of the Roman imperial system.

Augustus did not usually call himself “emperor” in the modern sense. He used titles such as princeps, meaning “first citizen,” and imperator, a military honorific that later became the root of the English word “emperor.” Julius Caesar was a dictator, not a Roman emperor, and Augustus was his successor rather than his biological son.