Crocodile

Cold, patient, and ruthlessly calculating — Rome's ultimate survivor.

Octavian (later Augustus) was the supreme example of a patient, cold-blooded strategist who lay in wait and struck only when victory was certain — most devastatingly in his long, methodical destruction of Antony and Cleopatra. He showed little outward emotion, masked his iron will behind a veneer of republican deference, and outlasted every rival through calculation rather than impulsive force. His decades-long consolidation of absolute power while pretending to restore the Republic is perhaps history's greatest political ambush.