Obviously Suetonius does not see Augustus as the restorer of the Republic, perhaps due to the foresight that after Augustus' death Rome would be ruled by a hereditary line of emperors.

However, Suetonius does point out that Augustus' actions were carried out with the good of Rome at heart and on the behalf of the Roman people.

Suetonius lived under the rule of a Roman emperor, Hadrian, so had to be careful about discrediting or criticising this degree of power. Hence, Suetonius simply observes that Augustus had the power of an emperor and lead Rome as a sole ruler without openly passing judgement on this.

In fact, Hadrian was in competition with Augustus and tried throughout the duration of his rule to present his achievements as going above and beyond those of Augustus. Augustus had taken inspiration from a multitude of cultures, built on and bettered these in his transformation of Rome and, according to Suetonius, "could rightly boast that what he had found as brick he had left as marble". Hadrian, then, had to build on Augustus' already excellent Rome if he were to compete with Augustus' legacy. Hence Hadrian's Mausoleum, a scaled up version of Augustus' Mausoleum.

He defends Augustus against the words of Cassius Parmensis who insulted Augustus by saying "Your mother's flour came from a miserable Arician bakery and the coin-stained hands of a Nerulian money-changer kneaded it."

He dismisses Mark Antony's attempts to "belittle" Augustus as mere allegations not based on facts and only includes them in his work in order to argue against them.

Suetonius emphasises Augustus' important family connections. For example, he mentions that his maternal grandfather Marcus Atius Balbus was closely related to the renowned general Pompey the Great.

"Gaius Octavius, his father, was from the beginning of life a man of considerable wealth and reputation; consequently I cannot believe that he was also a money-changer who distributed bribes among the voters in the Campus and undertook other electioneering services." Suetonius suggests that the very idea of Augustus' father being a money-changer is demeaning. This could be out of respect for Augustus as it implies that a man as great as him cannot have come from such a disreputable background.

Biographical account of Augustus' life; part of a larger work that chronicled the lives of the leaders/emperors of Rome from Julius Caesar to Domitian.

Augustus consistently portrayed himself as a good republican leader and the idea of bringing about a restoration of Rome's traditional governmental system, the Republic, was key to his ideology. Suetonius presents Augustus as quite the opposite of a good republican leader.

In speaking of Augustus adulterous behaviour Suetonius makes no effort to argue against such claims; indeed, he substantiates them by saying that Augustus' friends themselves did not deny his adulteries: "Not even his friends denied that he was given to adulterous behaviour, though they justified it as a matter of policy not passion, claiming he discovered his enemy's intentions through their wives and daughters." (Life of Augustus, 69)

He presents Augustus as disrespecting the gods: "Then there was a banquet of his, known as the Feast of the Twelve Gods, the subject of scandalous gossip. The guests appeared dressed as deities, with Augustus as Apollo" (Life of Augustus, 70). Worse still, Suetonius portrays Augustus as ignoring the hardships of the people of Rome who were enduring a famine at the time of this luxurious feasting.