Only time will tell whether Tony Blair was wise to publish his memoirs. The first Roman emperor Augustus, who came to power in 31 BC after a bloody civil war, abandoned his.
His purpose seems to have been to answer his critics, who were accusing him of being a merciless, criminal, cowardly, jumped-up nobody. But in 23 BC he discontinued it. Instead, he concentrated on refining his Res Gestae (‘My Achievements’), which was inscribed on two bronze plaques and placed outside his mausoleum in Rome. In other words, Augustus was interested in posterity’s judgment. He realised that an autobiography which merely refought yesterday’s battles achieved nothing except keeping the muck fresh and reusable. But a bald statement of what he had actually done — let his enemies, and more importantly posterity, chew on that.
This document is a stupendous list of honours, titles and achievements (‘I restored these buildings, built these temples, put on these shows, conquered these lands, took these offices’) interspersed with occasional comment emphasising his conservatism (e.g.
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