I would like to point out that Julius Caesar was the only one of the 12 Caesars NOT to be an emperor.
None of the
12 caesars were strictly emperors, and
Julius Caesar was no less an emperor than the others; there were just various changes in titles.
Caesar was
Dictator for life and
Imperator.
Augustus was just a name given by the senate for
Augustus (albeit an important one) and he was likely called "
Caesar" by most.
His Imperator title was taken as
part of
his name rather than a title; he was also Princeps
Senatus. By osmosis, as it were subsequent emperors adopted the names of both
Caesar and
Augustus, but who is to say at what point those names really became synonomous with "emperor", or perhaps it was the
Imperator title that morphed into "emperor", a title which
Julius Caesar held in
abundance (several times). In all this period, both under JC and later emperors, the fiction was maintained of the Republic continuing, with the Senate, Consuls, tribunes and other magistrates; the Augustan settlement of January 27BC was less the establishment of an imperial dictatorship of
Julius Caesar, than the restoration of the Republic.
Augustus was really less an emperor than
Julius Caesar was, yet later emperors adopted the Augustan model. But wasn't
Sulla also as much an emperor as them all, and exactly alike with
Augustus, renounced
his dictatorial powers and assumed the modest first citizen role that
Augustus held for so many years.
Thus, if Suetonius, and the
Romans in general, regarded JC as much an emperor as all the later adopters of the title "
Caesar", then,
really he was an emperor. De facto as much an emperor as any other, and De Jure, no less an emperor than any others, under the fictional Republic.
I
hope this sparks some debate (especially by those who know the historical pedantries better than me!)
