The Roman Revolution (1939) is an influential scholarly study of the final years of the ancient Roman Republic and the creation of the Roman Empire by Caesar Augustus. The book was the work of Sir Ronald Syme (1903-1989), a noted Tacitean scholar, and was published by the Oxford University Press. It was immediately controversial. Its main conclusion was that the structure of the Republic and its Senate were inadequate to the needs of Roman rule, and that Augustus was merely doing what was necessary to restore order in public life. This was a situation and reasoning uncomfortably reminiscent of contemporary events in Nazi Germany and the other fascist regimes of the time.