The novel by the Leipzig archaeologist Wilhelm Adolf Becker "Gallus oder römische Scenen aus der Zeit Augusts" in the political context of his time
Abstrakt
In 1838 Wilhelm Adolf Becker, the German classicist and writer, published a novel on Cornelius Gallus, the first praefectus Alexandreae and Aegypti, a longtime friend of Augustus whom the princeps sacrificed to get along with the senate. His story gave the author the opportunity of a portrayal of this ruler as a tyrant and Gallus as a victim of political intrigues within the Roman senate.
The author of this article asks what impression the depiction of the first Roman emperor would make on the inhabitants of Saxony, where Becker lived and worked at Leipzig University in the time after the great defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig in 1813 and in the Vormärz period, a very turbulent time. Saxony was devastated and it took a long time for it to be restored.
Napoleon was a French tyrant in the eyes of Germans. The equation Augustus = Napoleon = tyrant is therefore understandable, even if it possibly was not the intention of Wilhelm Adolf Becker.