Octavian, from this point forward, and by a long and gradual series of tentative, patient measures, establishes the Roman principate, a system of government that enables him to maintain, in all essentials, absolute control.

Gradually reducing his sixty legions to twenty-eight, he retains approximately one hundred and fifty thousand legionaries, mostly Italian, and supplements them by about the same number of auxiliaries drawn from the provinces.

A permanent bodyguard (the Praetorians), based on the bodyguards maintained by earlier generals, is stationed partly in Rome and partly in other Italian towns.

A superb network of roads is created to maintain internal order and facilitate trade; and an efficient fleet is organized to police the Mediterranean.

Marcus Licinius Crassus, grandson of the famous triumvir and proconsul of Macedonia, had fought first with Sextus Pompeius and Mark Antony before defecting to Octavian.

Octavian had then appointed him as his colleague as consul for 30 BCE, even though Crassus had not been praetor, the office that was traditionally a prerequisite for the consulship.

Dispatched to Macedonia in 29 BCE, he moves against the Bastarnae, a tribe of Scythian ethnicity who have crossed the Danube and threatened Roman allies in neighboring Thrace.

He drives them back toward the Danube and finally defeats them in pitched battle, killing their King Deldo in single combat.

By Roman tradition, he is thus entitled to the Spolia opima, but Octavian blocks the privilege, apparently wishing to downplay the successes of individual generals in favor of his own prestige.

Crassus likewise does not receive the agnomen of Scythicus to commemorate his victory.

However, Octavian eventually does grant him a triumph upon his return to Rome.

The Serdi (Sardi), a Celtic tribe, had in the eighth century BCE established a settlement near the geographical center of the Balkans region, in the Sofia Basin, a troughlike valley in the western part of the country.

The Romans conquer this community soon after 29 BCE and name it Serdica (Greek: Sardica).

Herod executes his brother-in-law Kostobar (husband of Salome, father to Berenice) for conspiracy in 28 BCE.

Alexandra declares herself Queen, stating that Herod is mentally unfit to serve.

Josephus will write that this was Alexandra's strategic mistake; Herod executes her without trial.

Octavian and Agrippa hold a census (the first of three during the reign) of the civil population in 28.

They also reduce the Senate from about one thousand to eight hundred (later six hundred) compliant members; and Octavian is appointed its president.

Octavian realizes that the governing class will welcome him as the terminator of civil war only if he conceals his autocracy beneath provisions avowedly harking back to republican traditions.

Octavian, now Augustus Caesar, gives the ancient city of Samaria to Herod, who expands and renovates the city in 27 BCE and names it "Sebaste", meaning "Augustus", in the Emperor's honor.

An assassination attempt on Herod is foiled in this year.

The former fishing village of Pola, located on the Adriatic Sea at the southern tip of the Istrian peninsula, about sixty miles (one hundred kilometers) south of Tergeste (modern Trieste), between 46 and 45 BCE had been elevated to colonial rank as the tenth region of the Roman Republic, under Julius Caesar.

The town had grown during that time and had at its zenith a population of about thirty thousand, becoming a significant Roman port with a large surrounding area under its jurisdiction.

The town in 42 BCE  during the civil war of the triumvirate of Octavian, Mark Antony and Lepidus against Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius, had taken the side of Cassius, since the town had been founded by Cassius Longinus, brother of Cassius.

The town had been demolished after Octavian's victory.

Soon rebuilt at the request of Octavian's daughter Iulia, it was then called Colonia Pietas Iulia Pola Pollentia Herculanea'.

Great classical constructions are built of which a few remain.

Construction begins on a great amphitheater, Pula Arena (completed in CE 68), much of it still standing to this day.

The Romans also supply the city with a water supply and sewage systems, and fortify the city with a wall with ten gates, a few of which still remain: the Gate of Hercules (in which the names of the founders of the city are engraved), the Twin Gates, and the triumphal Arch of the Sergii.

The arch commemorates three brothers of the Sergii family, specifically Lucius Sergius Lepidus, a tribune serving in the twenty-ninth legion that participated in the Battle of Actium and in 27 BCE disbanded.

This suggests an approximate date of construction.

The arch stands behind the original naval gate of the early Roman colony.

The Sergii are a powerful family of officials in the colony and for centuries will retain their power.

Octavian has fought three campaigns in Illyria and Dalmatia from 35 BCE to 33 BCE.

The first mention of the province of Illyricum occurs in the context of Augustan settlement of 27 BCE, when it is assigned as a propraetorial province to imperial control.

The Romans divide the lands that make up present-day Albania among the provinces of Macedonia, …

… Dalmatia, and …

…Epirus.

Nimes, which derives its name from that of a spring in the Roman village, is located on the Via Domitia, a Roman road constructed in 118 BCE that connects Italy to Spain.

The hill named Mt.

Cavalier is the site of the early oppidum, which gave birth to the city.

During the third and second centuries BCE, a surrounding wall was built, closed at the summit by a dry-stone tower, which was later incorporated into the masonry of the Tour Magne.

The Wars of Gaul and the subsequent fall of Marseille in 49 BCE had allowed Nîmes to regain its autonomy under Rome.

Veterans of the Roman legions who had served Julius Caesar in his Nile campaigns, at the end of fifteen years of soldiering, had been given plots of land to cultivate on the plain of Nîmes, which became a Roman colony sometime before 28 BCE, as witnessed by the earliest coins, which bear the abbreviation NEM.

COL, "Colony of Nemausus.

Soon after the residents of Nimes receive Roman citizenship, the city is replanned with an organized street grid.