ssor, had followed a Civil War. In the confusing interregnum which followed Julius Caesar's assassination, a complicated struggle ensued for succession to power. Augustus' reference to his relative youth, 17 when Caesar died, may have been an attempt to link his exploits with those of other men who accomplished great deeds at young ages such as Alexander the Great, Scipio Africanus and Pompey the Great. The leading patricians in the Senate were not sold on Octavian's credentials to succeed Caesar, who had defied their prerogatives, but many of them also feared that Caesar's former master of the horse, Mark Antony, was an incipient tyrant. Some of Octavian's closest allies in the Senate in the ensuing struggles were the assassins of his father and were in the opinion of Brunt & Moore, "always unnatural." Some of Octavian's initial actions were illegal, but were later authorized by the Senate under Cicero's leadership. Octavian first obtained his consulship by presenting the senate with an armed diktat, hardly a
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