Augustus lived into his 70s but began his public career at just nineteen years of age. This is a well-known fact, but little consideration has been given to its significance. How did his age shape the representation of his actions? How did older men react to a nineteen-year-old with an army? What were their expectations, and how did their ideas influence Octavian and the development of the imagery of the later Augustan age? The paper will examine this problem with a view to identifying how age shaped the first princeps’ identity.