Octavius Caesar: The Man Who Wins by Not Feeling Anything

Octavius Caesar enters the play in Act 1 Scene 4, reading a report of Antony's indulgence in Egypt. He is cool, precise, and contemptuous. He is also twenty-three years old by the historical timeline, though Shakespeare does not emphasise this. What he emphasises is that Octavius is the political future, and Antony is the heroic past.

He never loses. His calculation at every stage is correct. He uses his sister Octavia as a political tool, marrying her to Antony in an alliance he can reasonably predict will not hold. When it fails, he gains a legitimate grievance. He fights the war he wanted, on the terms he chose, and wins it.

His final scene, arriving to find Cleopatra dead, gives him his only moment of something resembling feeling. He calls her 'bravest at the last' and orders her a 'solemn show' of burial beside Antony. Whether this is genuine respect or a final display of political magnanimity is the play's last ambiguity. He gets the world. What he does with it is Rome's problem.