Octavian arrives in Rome as the teenage heir of a murdered Caesar, and this film tracks how he turns that inheritance into absolute power. He hunts down his adoptive father's assassins, seizes their property, and grinds through a civil war before settling into rule under the modest title of Princeps, all while keeping the Republic's old offices and rituals intact as cover for one-man government. The film credits him with the Pax Augusta, decades of relative peace after a century of Roman civil wars, then turns to the succession question that peace never solved. Julia, his own daughter, and Livia Drusilla, his third wife, maneuver their sons toward the throne through exile, scandal, and suspicious deaths, with Livia ultimately winning out and placing her son Tiberius in power. Historians and reenactments trace the plotting inside the palace, treating the marriage at the center of it as a working political partnership as much as a household. It runs a full hour and covers the reign in detail.