Augustus: the Biography by Jochen Bleicken; trans. Anthea Bell, book review: Strong on battles but weak on human relations

"You owe everything to your name, boy." If Mark Antony thought he would wound Octavian with this slur, he was surely mistaken. Because Octavian, who had taken the name of his adoptive father, Caesar, and added it to his own, and who would later acquire the previously unused honorific title, Augustus, knew all about the power of names, and indeed the power of appearance compared with reality.